James, at the time to which I am referring, appeared to be upwards of fifty. Perhaps he looked older than he was, through powdering his hair. He was much more hasty and irascible than his father. He punished violently and promptly. Old Bob, on the other hand, would sometimes say, ‘I won’t whip thee now, my boy; but I _will_ whip thee. Not now—no. I’ll let it hang over thy head.’ And so he did, occasionally, for some weeks; and whipped him at last. James was rather a better scholar, and somewhat worse informed in other respects than Old Bob. He had small regard for a plodding student, and great partiality for anyone who could make neat verses. It being a tenet with him that not a moment should ever be wasted, he insisted on our taking books into the hall to read during meals. In conformity with this principle, it was said that, having a benefice in the neighbourhood at which he preached weekly, he used to drive there, reading Horace, with his whip stuck upright in his vehicle. These itinerary studies ended, as might have been foreseen, in a serious accident; his horse running at its own sweet will over a cow in the road, and spilling him. He had a preposterous antipathy to the least noise, and his appearance in the school produced an awful silence immediately. James’s greatest defect was the absolute dependence which he placed on the word of the inferior masters. In answer to a complaint from one of them, unlike Old Bob, he would never hear a boy speak, but punished him instantly. Yet he was naturally of a kind disposition; and his alacrity in flogging, arose partly from impatience and irritability—partly from his having been brought up in that faith.