agers, and swore when they lost--smoked in your face,
and expectorated on the floor. Their proudest glory was to drive the
mail--their mightiest exploit to box with the coachman--their most
delicate amour to leer at the barmaid.

It will be believed, that I felt little regret in quitting companions
of this description. I went to take leave of our college tutor. "Mr.
Pelham," said he, affectionately squeezing me by the hand, "your conduct
has been most exemplary; you have not walked wantonly over the college
grassplats, nor set your dog at the proctor--nor driven tandems by day,
nor broken lamps by night--nor entered the chapel in order to display
your intoxication--nor the lecture-room, in order to caricature the
professors. This is the general behaviour of young men of family and
fortune; but it has not been your's. Sir, you have been an honour to
your college."

Thus closed my academical career. He who does not allow that it passed
creditably to my teachers, profitably to myself, and beneficially to the
world, is a narrow-minded and illiterate man, who knows nothing of the
advantages of modern education.

CHAPTER III.

Thus does a false ambition rule us, Thus pomp delude, and folly fool us.
--Shenstone.

An open house, haunted with great resort.--Bishop Hall's Satires.

I left Cambridge in a very weak state of health; and as nobody had yet
come to London, I accepted the invitation of Sir Lionel Garrett to pay
him a visit at his country seat. Accordingly, one raw winter's day,
full of the hopes of the reviving influence of air and exercise, I found
myself carefully packed up in three great coats, and on the high road to
Garrett Park.

Sir Lionel Garrett was a character very common in England, and, in
describing him, I describe the whole species. He was of an ancient
family, and his ancestors had for centuries resided on their estates
in Norfolk. Sir Lionel, who came to his majority and his fortune at the
same time, went up to London at the age of twenty-one, a raw, uncouth
sort of young man, in a green coat and lank hair. His friends in town
were of that set whose members are above ton, whenever they do not grasp
at its possession, but who, whenever they do, lose at once their aim and
their equilibrium, and fall immeasurably below it. I mean that set which
I call "the respectable," consisting of old peers of an old school;
country gentlemen, who still disdain not to love their wine and to hate
the French