Euripides. The latter were thought equally competent to tell you any thing respecting Homer and Demosthenes. These two classes and the head boys of the Navigation School, held a certain rank over the whole place, both in school and out. Indeed, the whole of the Navigation School, upon the strength of cultivating their valour for the navy, and being called King's Boys, had succeeded in establishing an extraordinary pretension to respect. This they sustained in a manner as laughable to call to mind, as it was grave in its reception. It was an etiquette among them never to move out of a right line as they walked, whoever stood in their way. I believe there was a secret understanding with Grecians and Deputy Grecians, the former of whom were unquestionably lords paramount in point of fact, and stood and walked aloof when all the rest of the school were marshalled in bodies. I do not remember any clashing between these great civil and naval powers; but I remember well my astonishment when I first beheld some of my little comrades overthrown by the progress of one of these very straight-forward person

ages, who walked on with as tranquil and unconscious a face, as if nothing had happened. It was not a fierce-looking push; there seemed to be no intention in it. The insolence lay in the boy's appearing not to know that such an inferior human being existed. It was always thus, wherever they came. If aware, the boys got out of their way; if not, down they went, one or more; away rolled the top or the marbles, and on walked the future captain

In maiden navigation, frank and free.

They wore a badge on the shoulder, of which they were very proud, though in the streets it must have helped to confound them with charity boys. For charity boys, I must own, we all had a great contempt, or thought so. We did not dare to know that there might have been a little jealousy of our own position in it, placed as we were midway between the homeliness of the common charity school and the dignity of the foundations. We called them "chizzy-wags," and had a particular scorn and hatred of their nasal tone in singing.

The under grammar-master was the Reve

rend Mr. Field. He was a good-looking man, very gentlemanly, and always dressed at the neatest. I believe he once wrote a play. He had the reputation of being admired by the ladies. A man of a more handsome incompetence for his situation perhaps did not exist. He came late of a morning; went away soon in the afternoon; and used to walk up and down, languidly bearing his cane, as if it was a lily, and hearing our eternal Dominuses and As in præsenti's with an air of ineffable endurance. Often, he did not hear at all. It was a joke with us, when any of our friends came to the door, and we asked his permission to go to them, to address him with some preposterous question wide of the mark; to which he used to assent. We would say, for instance, "Are you not a great fool, sir?" or "Isn't your daughter a pretty girl?" to which he would reply, "Yes, child." When he condescended to hit us with the cane, he made a face as if he was taking physic. Miss Field, an agreeable-looking girl, was one of the goddesses of the school; as far above us as if she had lived on Olympus. Another was Miss Pa

trick, daughter of the lamp-manufactory in Newgate-street. I do not remember her face so well, not seeing it so often; but she abounded in admirers. I write the names of these ladies at full length, because there is nothing that should hinder their being pleased at having caused us so many agreeable visions. used to identify them with the picture of Venus in Tooke's Pantheon.

We

School was a newer scene to me than to most boys: it was also a more startling one. I was not prepared for so great a multitude; for the absence of the tranquillity and security of home; nor for those exhibitions of strange characters, conflicting wills, and violent, and, as they appeared to me, wicked passions, which were to be found, in little, in this epitome of the great world. I was confused, frightened, and made solitary. My mother, as I have observed before, little thought how timid she had helped to render her son, in spite of those more refined theories of courage and patriotic sentiments which she had planted in him.

I will not mention the name of the other

master, the upper one, whom I am now about to speak of, and whom I have designated at the head of this paper as a schoolmaster of the old leaven. I will avoid it, not because I can thus render it unknown, but because it will remain less known than it would otherwise. I will avoid it also, because he was a conscientious man in some things, and undoubtedly more mistaken than malignant; and last, not least, because there may be inheritors of his name, whose natures, modified by other sources, and not liable to the same objections, might be hurt in proportion to their superiority.

He was a short stout man, inclining to punchiness, with large face and hands, an aquiline nose, long upper lip, and a sharp mouth. His eye was close and cruel. The spectacles threw a balm over it. Being a clergyman, he dressed in black, with a powdered wig. His clothes were cut short; his hands hung out of the sleeves, with tight wristbands, as if ready for execution; and as he generally wore grey worsted stockings, very tight, with a little balustrade leg, his whole appearance presented