"All are quite well except poor Mrs Jones, who has the ague very bad indeed; Primmins has made her wear a charm for it, and Mrs Jones actually declares she is already much better. One can't deny that there may be a great deal in such things, though it seems quite against the reason. Indeed your father says, 'Why not? A charm must be accompanied by a strong wish on the part of the charmer that it may succeed,--and what is magnetism but a wish?' I don't quite comprehend this; but, like all your father says, it has more than meets the eye, I am quite sure. "Only three weeks to the holidays, and then no more school, Sisty--no more school! I shall have your room all done freshly, and made so pretty; they are coming about it to-morrow. "The duck is quite well, and I really don't think it is quite as lame as it was. "God bless you, dear, dear child!--Your affectionate happy mother, "K. C." The interval between these letters and the morning on which I was to return home, seemed to me like one of those long, restless, yet half dreamy days which in some infant malady I had passed in a sick-bed. I went through my task-work mechanically, composed a Greek ode in farewell to the Philhellenic, which Dr Herman pronounced a _chef-d'œuvre_, and my father, to whom I sent it in triumph, returned a letter of false English with it, that parodied all my Hellenic barbarisms by imitating them in my mother tongue. However, I swallowed the leek, and consoled myself with the pleasing recollection that, after spending six years in learning to write bad Greek, I should never have any further occasion to avail myself of so precious an accomplishment. And so came the last day. Then, alone, and in a kind of delighted melancholy, I revisited each of the old haunts. The robbers' cave we had dug one winter, and maintained, six of us, against all the police of the little kingdom. The place near the pales where I had fought my first battle. The old beech stump on which I sate to read letters from home! With my knife, rich in six blades, (besides a cork-screw, a pen-picker, and a button-hook,) I carved my name in large capitals over my desk. Then night came, and the bell rang, and we went to our rooms. And I opened the window and looked out. I saw all the stars, and wondered which was mine--which should light to fame and fortune the manhood about to commence. Hope and Ambition were high within me;--and yet, behind them, stood Melancholy. Ah! who amongst you, readers, can now summon back all those thoughts, sweet and sad--all that untold, half-conscious regret for the past--all those vague longings for the future, which made a poet of the dullest amongst you on the last night before leaving boyhood and school for ever! EDUCATION IN WALES.[2]