having produced in my bosom the intended effect, he seemed to chuckle
in secret over the sting he had inflicted, and was characteristically
disregardful of the public applause which the success of his witty
endeavours might have so easily elicited. That the school, indeed, did
not feel his design, perceive its accomplishment, and participate in
his sneer, was, for many anxious months, a riddle I could not
resolve. Perhaps the gradation of his copy rendered it not so readily
perceptible; or, more possibly, I owed my security to the master air of
the copyist, who, disdaining the letter, (which in a painting is all
the obtuse can see,) gave but the full spirit of his original for my
individual contemplation and chagrin.

I have already more than once spoken of the disgusting air of patronage
which he assumed toward me, and of his frequent officious interference
withy my will. This interference often took the ungracious character of
advice; advice not openly given, but hinted or insinuated. I received it
with a repugnance which gained strength as I grew in years. Yet, at this
distant day, let me do him the simple justice to acknowledge that I can
recall no occasion when the suggestions of my rival were on the side
of those errors or follies so usual to his immature age and seeming
inexperience; that his moral sense, at least, if not his general talents
and worldly wisdom, was far keener than my own; and that I might,
to-day, have been a better, and thus a happier man, had I less
frequently rejected the counsels embodied in those meaning whispers
which I then but too cordially hated and too bitterly despised.

As it was, I at length grew restive in the extreme under his distasteful
supervision, and daily resented more and more openly what I considered
his intolerable arrogance. I have said that, in the first years of our
connexion as schoolmates, my feelings in regard to him might have
been easily ripened into friendship: but, in the latter months of my
residence at the academy, although the intrusion of his ordinary manner
had, beyond doubt, in some measure, abated, my sentiments, in nearly
similar proportion, partook very much of positive hatred. Upon one
occasion he saw this, I think, and afterwards avoided, or made a show of
avoiding me.

It was about the same period, if I remember aright, that, in an
altercation of violence with him, in which he was more than usually
thrown off his guard, and spoke and acted with an o