er being than when at
Eton--reserved, gloomy and distrustful--cold and unfeeling--wandering
about the place like a solitaire, as I was. I had not, nor have I ever
had, an acquaintance in the county--I had never been into another
house. Should any friends of the family be staying with them, I would
take my breakfast of bread and milk before the usual hour, in order to
avoid meeting them, and then absented myself for the rest of the day,
until dinner-time. This last was indeed a painful ordeal, especially
should there be any ladies present.

The truth is, circumstances, and by no means my own inclinations,
forced me to be mute, and that, too, at times, when I would have
almost given my life to have been otherwise, and then I looked ashamed
of myself, as I really was, for my apparent deficiency of good
breeding.

But now it was that I was bidding farewell to Eton--an eternal
farewell! now it was that I felt

"How dear the schoolboy spot,
We ne'er forget, though there we are forgot."

I had been an Etonian for ten lovely years, and--what had I acquired?

I had, in due routine, become captain of the Oppidans--could, on an
emergency, translate the dead languages--had worked myself into the
eleven of cricket and of foot-ball, and now came forth from Keate's
chamber, destined to learn that "the recollections of past happiness
are the wrinkles of the soul."

BOOK THE SECOND.

CHAPTER I.

The youngest of a numerous family,--now that every profession is
overstocked,--has no right to entertain considerable expectations.
Therefore, when my father endured the expenses of my education till my
twenty-third year, he did far more than was incumbent on himself, and
far more than I, in any way, deserved. It was, indeed, an expensive
education, and the object to be gained by it, the Church.
Unfortunately, my inclination for this had never been ascertained, and
still more unfortunately, from my youth, I had ever opinions and
difficulties on religious points, thoroughly inconsistent with the
established one. These I had ever kept within myself, and it has been
my ruin. Had I earlier exposed them to my father, perhaps I might have
prosperously pursued some other profession, and been, at this moment,
something like an useful member of society.

Finally, in opposition to my own judgment and conviction, I bowed to
that of others, and was ordained Deacon, in St. George's Chapel,
Hanover Square. I no