How shall I describe the emotions with which I read the first novel I ever perused! A school-fellow had secretly brought with him from home after the holidays, the novel of Peregrine Pickle, which he carefully concealed in his trunk. He at first lent it to some of the elder boys, who read it, and enlarging on some of the most despicable incidents to be found, disgusted my meek spirit of it, by their report. It seemed to violate all my cherished ideas of beauty and soft luxury. I was then about fourteen years of age, and my companions persuaded me to a perusal. I took it up listlessly, expecting but little pleasure, but what language can paint the manner in which I was entranced by it? I read it over and over with increased delight, my entire soul and frame of mind and passions seemed to be suddenly changed and remodelled. I forgot Ariadne and Telemachus, and Tom Pipes and Hatchway became my idols, the undivided objects of my admiration. I had hitherto been a remarkably quiet and inoffensive boy; Telemachus I considered never took delight in robbing orchards. I had the confidence of my teachers from my uniform rejection of any participation in the rude affrays, the catastrophe of which dramas was in general an almost universal flogging match. My admiration naturally led to its probable result, a desire to imitate--I firmly resolved to become a Peregrine. I soon promoted myself to be the leader of every mad prank that the wit of a spirit suddenly excited to activity could devise. In the first fortnight I got flogged for tying a huge mass of brown paper to the tail of the favourite cat of the master's lady, with which she rushed with an insane and terrifying distraction into the drawing-room. We owed a spite to a neighbouring milkman for tale-bearing, and we rendered his pump, the great source of profit, useless, by filling it with soot and mire. The old woman who served the school with tarts, and who, in her endeavours to please all palates, brought some varieties heated over a charcoal fire, had her apparatus blown to atoms by an ounce of gunpowder, insinuated with so much art, that although done before her face, she could attach no one with the offence. All became riot, waste, and destruction under the guidance of my beloved Peregrine.