Hence, as I said, I was glad to find the old man so willing to narrate his history, and to have so perfect a memory of his early days, as I expected thus to learn a lesson in the formation of human character, the most important study to which the human mind can be directed. But I confess I was somewhat startled when he invited me, as he termed it, to “walk with him into Hawskhead school,” as I dreaded what is commonly called a long yarn, more especially as the course of our walk together was now drawing to a termination. “My good friend,” said I, “I would listen to you with the greatest pleasure, but there is _one_ school-boy taste which we never lose sight of as long as we live, viz., an accurate knowledge of the dinner hour; and mine, I feel, is approaching. I shall be most happy to resume our walk and our talk together to-morrow morning, when I hope we shall be able to get through your first school-day with mutual pleasure and satisfaction.” “I beg your pardon,” said the old man, smiling, “but a full stomach has seldom much feeling for an empty one.—Mine happens to be in that more favourable condition at the present moment, and thankful am I to GOD for it, for I can remember the day when I have been reduced to feed my eyes instead of my mouth at the butcher’s shop? But I am really anxious to give you a specimen of my early school-days, because I was brought up under a system of instruction which is now rapidly passing away. At every town, and almost every village in the north of England, there was, and indeed still is, a grammar school; generally pretty well endowed as to income, and under the management of a master and usher, one if not both, educated at one of the universities of Oxford or Cambridge. All the learning required at the time when they were founded was Latin and Greek, and the masters of these schools were full of both. The schools were free to all who came to them, so that the little statesman or farmer, who happened to live near one of them, could give his son as good an education as the first nobleman in the land, and at no further expense than providing his child with meat and clothing. These lads were brought up with frugal and industrious habits, and told from their very childhood, that if they made themselves good scholars, they might hereafter become bishops, or judges of the land, which in those days often came to pass. One or two of the oldest bishops on the bench at this moment, sprang out of these grammar schools; and many of our most distinguished lawyers. But they are now, most of them, I hear, at a very low ebb. The school-house is falling down, and the little village around it, which was supported by the pupils and boarders, is pining away. This is a sad blow, sir, to the poor north.—The farmer’s son gets not that good education that he used to have, and is bound down for ever to his plough and his flail, instead of rising to be one of the ornaments of his