Yet I was, I think, far from being an idle boy. I neglected my studies, not to become listless and unemployed, but that I might earn more time for other, and, as most persons would think, less edifying pursuits, and was therefore invariably devoted to cricket, rowing, and foot-ball matches. This, then, was the good or ill effect which resulted from the chance of circumstance. My father had at once concluded, that send a boy to Eton, pay the yearly bills, and his education was infallibly insured. From the moment that I entered the college, I had been carelessly placed far above my acquirements; and constant flogging was inevitable, for a year or two at least, until, perhaps, by close application, I had made myself equal to my daily tasks. But this was a prospect by far too distant to be entertained by a boy of nine years old; for it is the ambition of a boy not to be flogged at all--not as little as possible. An objection to sending a boy early to Eton is, that should he have the hardihood to brave frequent punishment, he may be very nearly as idle as he pleases; and at this early age, too, he has not the sense to apply himself to study of his own will, and that, too, while surrounded by so many temptations to the contrary. One flogging, without the slightest stigma attaching to it, or reprimand, is the certain penalty of failure in his task. With hardihood or without it, I then had no chance, though, at all events, I acquired it, and that too, to such a degree, and I deemed the penalty so trivial, that I henceforth enjoyed a delightful sense of freedom and independence in its way. If I bestowed a thought on the subject at all, it was to be flogged not more than once in a day, if I could conveniently do otherwise. Yet, in an irrational mood, I would read--I would frequently steal off to some quiet spot in the neighbourhood, and employ myself in various histories, of which reading I was always very fond. My favourite retreat was up in an old pollarded willow-tree, secure from fagging, and therefore enjoying the distant voices in the playing-fields, delightfully contrasting with the quiet splash of the trout leaping in the river beneath me. Thus I obtained a respectably accurate knowledge of the Roman, Grecian, and English histories, and a somewhat precocious insight too of the characters of their various and prominent actors. As for the heroes of the fabulous ages, I was completely conversant with each of their circumstances, and for this reason. I must acknowledge, that, as the hour approached for punishment, I was apt to be troubled in mind, similarly to a patient about to undergo a disagreeable operation; but no sooner had I opened Lempriere's classical dictionary, than every unpleasing anticipation was dissolved, and I became totally unconscious of vulgar realities, and absorbed in its poetical but unequivocal immorality. CHAPTER VI.