It is curious to observe at what an early age the different instincts of the sexes develop themselves in children. Little Miss can scarcely waddle before she shoulders a doll, which she calls her baby, and on which she lavishes much maternal care, not without certain wholesome correction. From her earliest youth, the abstract idea of wife and motherhood is familiar to her mind; and to be married, though she knows not what it is, as natural and inevitable a destiny as to learn music and have a governess. Young Master, on the contrary, has no idea of being a “pater familias.” His notion of being grown up is totally unconnected with housekeeping. When “he is a man, he means to be a soldier, or a sailor, or a pastry-cook--he will have a gun and hunters, and go all day to the stable, and eat as much as he chooses, and drink port wine like papa;” but to bring up children of his own, and live in one place, is the very last thing he dreams of. “Cousin Charlie” entertained the usual notions of his kind. Although an orphan, he had never known the want of a parent--uncle and aunt Kettering supplying him with as kind and indulgent a father and mother as a spoilt little boy could desire. And although he had his childish sorrows, such as parting from Blanche, going to school, being whipped according to his deserts when there, and thus smuggled through that amusing work, the Latin Grammar; yet, altogether, his life was as happy as any other child’s of his own age, on whom health, and love, and plenty had shone from the day of its birth. Of course, old John Kettering sent him to Eton, that most aristocratic of schools, where Charlie learnt to swim--no mean accomplishment; arrived at much perfection in his “wicket-keeping” and “hitting to the leg,” as, indeed, he deserved, for the powers of application he evinced in the study of cricket; was taught to “feather an oar” in a method which the London watermen pronounced extremely inefficient; and acquired a knack of construing Horace into moderately bad English, with a total disregard for the ideas, habits, prejudices, and intentions of that courtly bard. Of course, too, he was destined for the army. With _his_ prospects, in what other profession could he get through his allowance, and acquire gentlemanlike habits of extravagance in what is termed good society? Old Kettering wanted to make his nephew a gentleman--that was it. When asked how Charlie was getting on at Eton, and what he learnt there, the uncle invariably replied, “Learn, sir! why, he’ll learn to be a gentleman.”