As regards the two former intellectual characteristics, I must admit that I am unusually obtuse; for although boasting a long and intimate acquaintance with both, I have never arrived at any certain conclusion as to their good or ill effects, though I have little doubt but that they contain a mixture of each, only I am uncertain which may preponderate. The former might be profitable, both to the fagger and the fagged, did it not commence and finish at the wrong end; for could a boy be well fagged from the age of fourteen to eighteen, he would probably be all the better for it, but during this period he is unfortunately the despot. Many persons conclude that the system acts beneficially on the youthful members of the aristocracy; but I think the same end might be attained, and more respectably, by the mere jostling amid the crowd, without proceeding to the extremity of subjecting a boy of gentlemanly feeling, to the coarse caprices of a tradesman's son. I have myself _requested_ the present Marquis of D----e to walk into the playing-fields each evening, with a slop-basin in his hand, and milk an unusually quiet cow that used to be there; but this office fell to his lot, merely from his being the only boy in my dames who knew how to milk a cow--in fact, it was his boast that he could milk a cow better than any man in England. Lord C----stl----h too, must well remember when a great wild, raw-boned Irish fellow, with a rope round his waist, would throw himself from Lion's Leap into the river, by way of learning to swim, while his lordship was appointed to pull him out again; but the particular time that I now mean was, when he was all but drowned, and vociferating with Hibernian vehemence, "pull, you blackguard!" every time his head emerged for a moment from the bottom of the river. But whatever effects this levelling process may have in youthful days, I suspect that they are by no means permanent, and are completely obliterated on leaving the school.