When Reginald had taken his degree, which he did with high honour and credit, he felt an ardent desire to visit his friend and school–fellow, Edward Ethelston, in Germany: he was also anxious to see something of the Continent, and to study the foreign languages. This wish he expressed without circumlocution to the squire, who received the communication with undisguised disapprobation: “What the devil can the boy want to go abroad for? not satisfied with wasting two or three years poking over Greek, Latin, mathematics, and other infernal ‘atics’ and ‘ologies,’ now you must go across the Channel to eat sour–krout, soup–maigre, and frogs! I won’t hear of it, sir;” and in order to keep his wrath warm, the squire poked the fire violently. In spite of this determination, Reginald, as usual, carried his point, and in a few weeks was on board a packet bound for Hamburgh, his purse being well filled by the squire, who told him to see all that could be seen, and “not to let any of those Mounseers top him at any thing.” Reginald was also provided with letters of credit to a much larger amount than he required; but the first hint which he gave of a wish to decline a portion of the squire’s generosity raised such a storm, that our hero was fain to submit. CHAPTER IV. CONTAINING SUNDRY ADVENTURES OF REGINALD BRANDON AND HIS FRIEND ETHELSTON ON THE CONTINENT; ALSO SOME FURTHER PROCEEDINGS AT SQUIRE SHIRLEY’S; AND THE RETURN OF REGINALD BRANDON TO HIS HOME.—IN THIS CHAPTER THE SPORTING READER WILL FIND AN EXAMPLE OF AN UNMADE RIDER ON A MADE HUNTER. Reginald having joined his attached and faithful friend Ethelston at Hamburgh, the young men agreed to travel together; and the intimacy of their early boyhood ripened into a mature friendship, based upon mutual esteem. In personal advantages, Reginald was greatly the superior; for although unusually tall and strongly built, such was the perfect symmetry of his proportions, that his height, and the great muscular strength of his chest and limbs, were carried off by the grace with which he moved, and by the air of high breeding by which he was distinguished: his countenance was noble and open in expression; and though there was a fire in his dark eye which betokened passions easily aroused, still there was a frankness on the brow, and a smile around the mouth, that told of a nature at once kindly, fearless, and without suspicion.