"I'd tame him!" rejoined Mr. Sharpe; I'd exorcise the little rampant devil that's within him !”

"But how would you go to work ?-how would you act! What on earth would you do with him ?"

"What would I do with him? Will he not listen to reason?" "To be sure he will; that's the worst of it. He'll sit down and argue the point with you for hours; he'll tell you candidly, that if you insult him, he feels himself bound to avenge the insult ; that his honour-his honour, my friend !-prompts him to retaliate; that he is prepared at any time to sign a treaty of peace, to the effect that if you cease to annoy him, he will cease to annoy you; and that in the event of such treaty being violated, of course he and you are again at open war."

"He is rather a queer customer to deal with," observed Mr. Sharpe.

"He is rather a queer customer. that he was if you did but know all."

You'd be very apt to think

"And yet," said Mr. Sharpe, after a pause, during which he had looked very mysterious, "I'd be bound still to tame him. Why, if he were a boy of mine!"-Mr. Sharpe said no more, but he shook his head with unspeakable significance, and took a very deep inspiration through his teeth.

"Well, my friend, well-urged the alderman, who wished him to proceed" and if he were your son, what would you do with him ?"

"Do! I'd do something with him! I'd teach him the difference! Do you think that he should ever get the upper hand of me!"

"But how would you manage it ?-that's the great point. I'll just explain to you the way in which he acted last week. On Monday I simply said to him while at dinner, that he ought to be ashamed of his recent conduct, when he seized the tureen, and sent the whole of the soup over me in an instant. I chastised him, -of course I chastised him, and he then upset the table. I rushed at him again; but having kept me at bay for some considerable time with the fragments of the dishes, he darted from the room. That night I found a number of nettles in my bed, and, on jumping out in agony, I discovered that my bed-room had scarcely a single pane of glass in it; and in the morning I had neither a boot nor a hat to put on. I got hold of him by stratagem, and shook him with just violence, and what do you think he did? Why he instantly went out into the pantry, got a basketful of eggs, and popped them at me, until really I was in such a state! I ran after him ; bnt, no!-he kept up the fire, carrying his basket of ammunition upon his arm. Well, I caught him again in the course of the day, and locked him up in the cellar, and there he set to work, and I do not know how many bottles of wine he broke. I heard the crash, and went and shook the young scoundrel again-I could not help it—and again he set to work. He was busy all the morning. I feared that he was employed in some mischief; indeed I was as certain of it as I was of my own existence. Accordingly, as I was enjoying my usual nap after dinner on the sofa, he quiet

ly crept into the room with a tankard of treacle, the whole of which he poured over me so gradually, commencing at my knees, that I did not awake until he had literally covered me, and before I could rise he had rushed from the room. My friend," continued the alderman, with due solemnity, "imagine the pickle I was in! Yet what could I do? What is to be done with such a fellow? I knew perfectly well that until I discontinued my chastisement he would never cease to annoy me. Of course it's very hard, I know and feel it, as a father, to be particularly hard; but then what could I have done in such a case? What would you, my friend, have done under the self-same circumstances?' "What would I have done!" cried Mr. Sharpe, very indignantly. "I can scarcely tell what I should not have done.

"

This proved the sum total of the advice the worthy alderman obtained from Mr. Sharpe; for although that gentleman naturally fancied that if Stanley had been a son of his he would have tamed him, he at the same time felt utterly unable to explain how.

From that period the worthy alderman gave Stanley up. He would have nothing more to do with him; he turned him over at once to the surveillance of his mother, who adored him, and by whom the pristine waywardness of his disposition had been fostered. "My dear, my sweet boy!-my own Stanley!"-she would exclaim, after a fit of desperation on his part," you know how dearly, how fondly I love you. Now do not, pray do not indulge in these frantic bursts of passion. Indeed, indeed they will injure your health, my love,-I am perfectly sure that they will. Come, promise me now that you will in future avoid them-do promise, there's a dear!"

"You must promise me, mother, that in future you will not provoke me!"

“I will not—indeed I will not!" she would exclaim. "My heart beats with joy when you are happy." The tears would then start, she would embrace him and fondle him like a child, and arrange his fine hair, which flowed in ringlets upon his shoulders. Having moreover lavished a thousand kisses upon his brow, she would gaze upon her "own sweet Stanley," the "pride of her soul," with an expression of rapture.

Truth to say, he was an extremely handsome youth, tall, and strikingly symmetrical; his eyes were of the most brilliant character, his features of the finest conceivable caste, while his presence was elegant, and even then commanding. That such a mother should have almost idolised him cannot be deemed marvellous. She could not, however, disguise from herself that she had from his earliest infancy cherished that spirit, which she now tried in vain to control. Nor was it, under the circumstances, at all extraordinary that from the age of fifteen he should have considered himself a man. He would suffer no one with impunity to designate him even a youth; and if any person applied to him the term "young gentleman," that person was made at once to feel the force of his displeasure. The servants had been of course accustomed to style him Mr. Stanley; but that servant was unblest who happened to pronounce the name of Stanley, after the alderman's unhappy dissolution. He would not permit it. "I pledge you my honour as a gentleman," he would say, "that if you dare to address me again as Mr. Stanley, I'll kick you to the devil."

It cannot hence be rationally expected that, with these views and feelings, his grief at the period of the alderman's death was very loud or very deep. He wore "the trappings and the suits of woe" as a purely social matter of course; but he hailed that period as the commencement of the era of his importance as a man. For albeit

nearly the whole of the alderman's property, real and personal, had been left to the widow, he knew perfectly well that he should have just as much command over it as if it had been bequeathed absolutely to him.

Stanley, however, was by no means content. He felt at first extremely gauche. He reflected that he was, after all, but the son of an alderman, and that reflection, let it come when it might, never failed to inflict a wound upon his pride. He was a youth of keen perception. He saw around him those whom he conceived to be more elegant, more composed, more au fait to etiquette, more refined. He felt unable to endure this. He was perpetually tormented with the idea. He listened, therefore, for the first time, to the suggestion made by his mother, that he should pass at least two years at Eton. As a scholar he was passable; but then he had been only at private schools, while those who shone in his judgment most brilliantly had been either to Oxford, to Cambridge, or at least to Eton. He conversed on the subject again and again, and at length became convinced that he ought to commence life in reality, as an Etonian, at least. It happened that the majority of his associates had been to Eton; and as they failed not to speak in high praise of the school, to explain that it had turned out by far the greater proportion of the most distinguished men of the age; that none but Etonians were esteemed perfect men of the world, and that it was in fact far more famous for that than for absolute learning, he eventually resolved upon going to Eton expressly in order to gain caste.

When this highly laudable resolution had been delicately communicated to the widow, she was delighted. She saw at once in Stanley a great man in embryo; and when she had been advised of the assumed fact that almost all the most distinguished men of the day were Etonians, she, of course, looked upon it as abundantly clear that all Etonians became distinguished men. This corollary was, in her judgment, really so natural and so correct that, had five thousand pounds been required for the start, she would have given that sum with unspeakable pleasure. Her Stanley-her own Stanley, was about to become an Etonian! She did not pretend to understand much about it, but she nevertheless conceived, from his description, that to be an Etonian would at once enable Stanley to associate with the sons of the most distinguished.

Stanley himself had, however, still some misgivings on the subject. It was true he had read Virgil, and a trifle of Livy; he could, moreover, versify-a little; but he could not expect to be placed above the fourth form. He had heard of fagging: he had also heard of flogging; and he knew that if they attempted to fag or to flog him! No matter-it was settled: he had made up his mind to go, and go he would, if it were only to enable him to say that he had been.

Accordingly, everything which could be deemed essential was prepared, and the preliminaries necessary to enable him to com