promptly caned by the beadle. The bamboo
was ineffectual to cane that reprobate's bad courses out of him. From
pitch-and-toss he proceeded to manslaughter if necessary: to highway
robbery; to Tyburn and the rope there. Ah! heaven be thanked, my
parents' heads are still above the grass, and mine still out of the
noose.

As I look up from my desk, I see Tunbridge Wells Common and the rocks,
the strange familiar place which I remember forty years ago. Boys
saunter over the green with stumps and cricket-bats. Other boys gallop
by on the riding-master's hacks. I protest it is Cramp, Riding master,
as it used to be in the reign of George IV., and that Centaur Cramp must
be at least a hundred years old. Yonder comes a footman with a bundle
of novels from the library. Are they as good as OUR novels? Oh! how
delightful they were! Shades of Valancour, awful ghost of Manfroni, how
I shudder at your appearance! Sweet image of Thaddeus of Warsaw, how
often has this almost infantile hand tried to depict you in a Polish cap
and richly embroidered tights! And as for Corinthian Tom in light blue
pantaloons and Hessians, and Jerry Hawthorn from the country, can all
the fashion, can all the splendor of real life which these eyes have
subsequently beheld, can all the wit I have heard or read in later
times, compare with your fashion, with your brilliancy, with your
delightful grace, and sparkling vivacious rattle?

Who knows? They MAY have kept those very books at the library still--at
the well-remembered library on the Pantiles, where they sell that
delightful, useful Tunbridge ware. I will go and see. I went my way
to the Pantiles, the queer little old-world Pantiles, where, a hundred
years since, so much good company came to take its pleasure. Is it
possible, that in the past century, gentlefolks of the first rank (as
I read lately in a lecture on George II. in the Cornhill Magazine)
assembled here and entertained each other with gaming, dancing,
fiddling, and tea? There are fiddlers, harpers, and trumpeters
performing at this moment in a weak little old balcony, but where is the
fine company? Where are the earls, duchesses, bishops, and magnificent
embroidered gamesters? A half-dozen of children and their nurses are
listening to the musicians; an old lady or two in a poke bonnet passes,
and for the rest, I see but an uninteresting population of native
tradesmen. As for the library, its window is full of pictures of burly
theologians