interfering; on the contrary, he, too, would commence to look coldly on his young parishioner. The lad, sunk in his own estimation by the judgment of those he had respected and who ought to know best, slinking away from their condemnation to seek refuge with his fellow-sinners, who could not at least set their faultlessness against his errors, might become the dog with a bad name in a fair way to be hung. Oliver Constable did not see how the unequal dispensation of justice was to be made even, but he smarted under the sense of it. The smart tempted him to act very much after the fashion of the great Dr. Johnson when the young bucks for whom he had a kindly regard invaded his room at midnight and summoned him to a lark. In like manner and with less solicitation, Oliver remained many an evening in the society of Jack Dadd, and of lads with even fewer hostages to respectability than Jack, and went with them—careless of what people said of his, Oliver’s, taste—in the young tradesmen’s senseless but harmless enough raids through the town, because Oliver Constable believed that his presence was a protection to the others, even more than a check on their erratic proceedings; yet in return for the double support, Oliver’s _protégés_ to a great extent fought shy of him. In these boyish demonstrations in which he chose to bear a part, Oliver had not the relief of cultured cleverness, some development of which had usually been intermingled with the ‘great fun’ and ‘awful jolliness’ of a gathering of university lads, whose rollicking propensities had not been altogether toned down by blue china and sage-green _portières_. If at a certain stage of the entertainment, missiles would fly about, howls be resorted to, and batterings of the door indulged in, at another there would occur lively mimicry of the Union speeches; parodies of old classic odes would carry the mind back to Greek and Roman feasts; viewiest of views—transcending the most extravagant speculations of ancient and modern philosophy—would be aired, and would serve at least to show that the young revellers had inherited thoughts and fancies, however crude, as well as the rampant spirits of their years.