For my own part, were I to revisit such a haunt of my youth, it would give me the greatest pleasure, out of mere regard to the rising generation, to find Prospect House turned into a Floor Cloth Manufactory, and the playground converted to a bleachfield. The tabatière is out of the question. In the way of learning, I carried off nothing in exchange for my knife and fork, and spoon, but a prize for Latin without knowing the Latin for prize, and a belief which I had afterwards to unbelieve again, that a block of marble could be cut in two with a razor. To be classical, as Ducrow would say, the Athenians, the day before the Festival of Theseus, their Founder, gratefully sacrificed a ram, in memory of Corridas the schoolmaster, who had been his instructor: but in the present day, were such offerings in fashion, how frequently would the appropriate animal be a donkey, and especially too big a donkey to get over the Pons Asinorum! From the preparatory school, I was transplanted in due time to what is called by courtesy, a finishing one, where I was immediately set to begin everything again at the beginning. As this was but a backward way of coming forward, there seemed little chance of my ever becoming what Mrs. Malaprop calls “a progeny of learning;” indeed my education was pursued very much after the plan laid down by that feminine authority. I had nothing to do with Hebrew, or Algebra, or Simony, or Fluxions, or Paradoxes, or such inflammatory branches; but I obtained a supercilious knowledge of accounts, with enough of geometry to make me acquainted with the contagious countries. Moreover, I became fluent enough in some unknown tongue to protect me from the French Mark; and I was sufficiently at home (during the vacations) in the quibbles of English grammar, to bore all my parents, relations, friends, and acquaintance, by a pedantical mending of their “cakeology.” Such was the sum total of my acquirements; being, probably, quite as much as I should have learned at a Charity School, with the exception of the parochial accomplishment of hallooing and singing of anthems.