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worn out with wakings and marchings, with hunger and thirst, and with all that can crush courage and weaken endurance.

It may be replied that Russell ought to have raised the terms, and doubled the staff of masters; and that he ought to have done this before the public made the discovery that the experiment was a failure. But it would hardly have been safe to raise the terms for a declining school. When, too, Russell was himself commanding the attention of more than a hundred boys to the highest work in the school, he could not think sixty too large a proportion for even lesser men engaged in elementary instruction. It was an illusion even in the Upper School, and still more in the Under.

CHAPTER LXIII.

SOME CONTEMPORARIES IN THE SCHOOL.

BERNAL OSBORNE was not prouder of Charterhouse than he was of his patriarchal descent; but if he had any gratitude in his nature, he was bound to give some of it to the school where no one ever enjoyed such licence of tongue. He could not be more than eleven when I went there in 1820, and already he was the most loquacious, impudent, and amusing fellow on the Green. He had a saucy word for every one that came in his way, and, as the American expresses it, could 'sauce back' without end. I never came in his way, and had I ever done so

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I should have been careful to give as little opening as possible. He was so exceedingly amusing that he had all the liberty of a court jester, though I don't remember that he went out of his way to inflict pain. After all, his talk was such froth that I should doubt whether anybody could recall a single witticism, or the subjects, or the occasions. But the figure, the manner, and the voice must be indelible in many a Carthusian memory.

And now for another contemporary, whom involuntarily, and by accident, I find myself putting in comparison with Bernal. I will not give the name, for it is unnecessary, and I feel I can more easily hint at a defect than do justice to a very high excellence. The name is one with many honoured representatives in the Carthusian roll. The man of whom I speak was, for all the time I was at Charterhouse, and for long after, my idea of a bright, youthful hero, an Achilles in the crowd, the morning star of that little firmament. He was all that I have heard Selwyn described, for I never saw the latter till he had been for a quarter of a century Bishop of New Zealand. My Charterhouse hero seemed as brilliant, as handsome, as single-minded, and as good. I do not remember whether he was captain; but it was not always the best scholar that was. He won the gold medal for the best Latin verses ever written at Charterhouse, as I have heard them described. With his tall, bounding figure, light tread, and elastic form he led in all the games.

Admiring and yet trembling, I used to watch him taking repeatedly a leap which I think he was the

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only one there that ever attempted. The Under School stood on a sort of ridge dividing the Green from the Wilderness, and was said to have received its form by the immense number of interments in the great plague of Edward III.'s reign. Towards the north-east this ridge sloped at an angle of forty-five, and with a drop that, to my memory, is ten feet, but it can hardly have been so much as that. Repeatedly did I see my contemporary take a run, bound into space, clearing the long slope, and lighting safely at the lower level.

Nor was that lower level soft yielding turf, or a bed of sand. It was hard, gravelly, and trodden like the rest of the playground. Any one can perform feats, if sure to be caught in a blanket. The clumsiest man or woman can descend the almost precipitous slope of volcanic dust on one side of Vesuvius in a few score bounds, with no other damage than the entire loss of blacking from the boots and a powdering of sulphur about the clothes.

My brilliant contemporary went to Cambridge, and took high honours. One of the first things I remember, or seem to remember, to have heard about him illustrates the very mixed character of human destinies. He was of a family of bankers. Soon after coming of age, under the direction of his seniors, he put the whole of his fortune into the bank, and in a few weeks the same newspaper that published his honours published also the bankruptcy of the firm, with his name as one of the partners. I daresay this statement admits of some correction, but I believe it to be substantially true. It is, however, no un

common thing for a man of twenty-two to be absolutely penniless, but yet to have a golden future.

My contemporary became mathematical master at a public school, and eventually its bursar. There was nothing strange or unworthy of the promise in such a beginning. But he settled into it, lived in it, and I believe died in it. Well, why should not a good Christian have done his duty in the station which Heaven had planted him in? During his life, and since his death, I have heard frequently the same account of him—that he was loved and honoured, and that he was believed to have contributed much to the intellectual and moral improvement of the school. I have even heard him described as a rather extraordinary case of an individual character impressing itself on a school, which, through its frequent changes, wants some elements of continuity.

I cannot help contrasting the man with Bernal Osborne, and the one career with the other. In any reasonable scale Bernal was immeasurably below comparison with the man I speak of; yet I suppose the world would call the career of the former a brilliant success, that of the latter a failure. Looking, as I did, for much, and wishing to see my schoolfellow emerge, I could not help a certain sense of blight, of dimness, and of disappointment when I heard of a born genius spending his days in teaching algebra, and a born hero keeping college accounts and managing college property. Surely there are plenty of men who can do these things very well, though they have not been dipped in the Styx, or educated by

centaurs.

ARE ALL NUMBERED:

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The feeling of a disappointment—that is, of a lame and impotent conclusion-was so deep in me, that I could not but often ask the reason, and revert to what I had once thought but a trifle, but had cause to think more of. I have mentioned in my 'Reminiscences' that, as Charterhouse Chapel was before the addition of a new aisle, we were all massed in a dark corner behind a large pier, and left to our own devices. My handsome contemporary, I think invariably, lay back with his very beautiful head on the lap of a young friend, I think a cousin, whose office it was to brush, and I think also oil, the glossy locks of golden hair. Perhaps there is not much to choose between this folly and my wrangling with Hobhouse about the changes in the Criminal Code. It may even be said that a man can attend to a sermon while in the barber's hands, though it is not possible in the other case. I think the exhibition was more scandalous and irreverent than mine. I may add that I could not help myself.

However that may be, many years before I could have had a thought of putting this upon paper, and when I had no idea but that my words would rest awhile in a few village memories, I have related these facts to schoolchildren, and added that when puzzled to account for a man of great promise not fulfilling it, and making no great mark, the only account I could give of it was this bit of folly and effeminacy in the House of God. It seemed to me like one of the small indications of internal danger that rouse first the curiosity, then the serious apprehension, of friends, nurses, and physicians. There is a saying that no man