never cost fifteen pounds, i. e. allowing six weeks pay for the gate, and eight weeks pay for the three three-penny glass windows which were broken. These and some other dirtinesses of behaviour, which came to my knowledge, determined me in the resolution not to let myself down to receive any favour at the hands of this man, who had affected of late to praise and call me a good boy, etc. I had soon an opportunity of putting my resolution into practice: he one day said, that as a reward for my learning so well, I should ride out with him: No,' I said, I have no boots.'' Borrow some.' 'None will fit me.' 'Then ride

6

without boots.' I cannot ride.' 'How did you come to ..................?'

In my father's carriage.' He ordered me sternly to get about my business, and send some one else to ride out with him. The fact was, I did not choose to be the dupe of his imposition : he had bought a little heath-cropping poney for forty-five shillings, and whenever any boy rode out with him, charged in the bill three shillings lent; a species of fraud and exorbitancy of which only a wretch

grown gray in the art of swindling could be guilty. In a word, during the year and a half which I remained at this blessedseminary, I lost what little classical literature I had before possessed, and gained, as a compensation, an awkward, shy, boorish sheepishness of manners, sly downcast lock, and a petty rascality of mind, with low cunning, and fraud, and lying, and dissimulation, and fear, and hypocrisy. Thus much of good did I receive from my worthy preceptor at ......... school; and in this state was I transplanted from his nursery, in

my twelfth

year, into................................................. on the foundation, as an alumnus

of ..............

I

ESSAY VIII.

INTERVIEW WITH A JESUIT.

SHALL make no apology for introducing the following story, which I heard lately from a gentleman of undoubted veracity,

"It is a bad world we live in," said my old friend, Dick Martin, to me the other day; "it is a bad world we live in, neighbour Whiffle." I, who knew my friend's failing, and have often, when on his blind side, smiled to see with what impetuosity, even an aged, prudential, and wealthy cit would ride his hobby-horse, replied, "The world, as to evil, I suppose, is not more reprehensible now than at any former period of time: let us remember what the satyrists and declaimers of old have said, and we shall find them all in the same story, from Juvenal to Pope, from Tacitus to Junius; only turn over the pages. "I will turn over no pages,"

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cried my friend peevishly;." you know I always despised your book-worms, and your books; I always trusted to good sense and sound observation, in consequence of which I am pretty well known at 'Change, and somewhere else too; but I scorn all boasting; not that I have altogether neglected eloquence, as it is well known, when I served the office of church-warden, I have spoken, for a matter of two minutes and a half, upon lettering the church buckets; and have,

once or twice in my life, speechified it a little at the Robin Hood; but that is neither here nor there, neighbour Whiffle: I say, it is a bad world we live in; and so you, spite of your candour, and benevolence, and optimism, forsooth, will allow when I have related to you the following narrative. The transaction is unavoidably involved in some degree of mystery, because the people to whom it alludes are now living, and tolerably well known, and by many respected too; however, to my tale: Young Jack Burnet, you must know, I chose to employ in the business; not but Jack has his faults; he is very young, pays too little deference and respect to trade, is too much attached to his books, though the dog does observe a little upon mankind, as he passes through life; but then he is positive, insolent, overbearing, authoritative, violent, and pertinacious, and, withal, desperately given to making long speeches and harangues; nevertheless, as I did not choose to appear myself, and yet was willing to make an effort towards relieving a fellow creature, who, though imprudent, was in great distress,

I trusted the management to Jack, who, I must say, is neither to be bullied nor wheedled out of what he thinks right. Jack, said I, you must go to Mr. Mask, the jesuit gentleman, and try if you cannot prevail on him to do something for poor Mr., who is in danger of starving from absolute poverty; but no one must be known to act in the matter but yourself. Having given these full and ample documents to Jack, whom I initiated into this mystery of ungodliness, merely to give him some little knowledge of mankind, which is not to be learned from books, Master Whiffle" My friend here assumed an air of triumph, which I did not choose to resent, first, because he had an ample fortune, and a seat in parliament, while I have only my wits to depend on, truly a very scanty patrimony, even to the most rigid and self-denying philosopher; secondly, because my friend, whose heart is really as benevolent as his head is uncultivated, was more an object of compassion than anger, so strongly was the anguish, on account of this deed, spite of the momentary elevation from his fancied superiority in