a clever-looking boy, who, with pen and paper before him, was sitting at the further end of a long desk, as great a contrast to the others, as the Good, to the Bad Apprentice in Hogarth. I could see his tongue even at work at one corner of his mouth,--a very common sign of boyish assiduity,--and his eyes never left his task but occasionally to glance towards his master, as if in anticipation of the approving smile, to which he looked forward as the prize of industry. I had already selected him inwardly for a favourite, and resolved to devote my best abilities to his instruction, when I saw him hand the paper, with a sly glance to his neighbour, from whom it passed rapidly down the desk, accompanied by a running titter, and sidelong looks, that convinced me the supposed copy was, indeed, a copy not of “Obey your superiors,” or “Age commands respect,” but of the head of the college, and, as a glimpse showed, a head with very ludicrous features. Being somewhat fatigued with my last execution, I suffered the cane of justice to sleep, and inflicted the fool’s-cap--literally the fool’s--for no clown in pantomime, the great Grimaldi not excepted, could have made a more laughter-stirring use of the costume. The little enormities, who only tittered before, now shouted outright, and nothing but the enchanted wand of bamboo could flap them into solemnity. Order was restored, for they saw I was, like Earl Grey, resolved to “stand by my order;” and while I was deliberating, in some perplexity, how to begin business, the two biggest boys came forward voluntarily, and standing as much as they could in a circle, presented themselves, and began to read as the first Greek class. Mr. Irving may boast of his prophets as much as he will; but in proportion to the numbers of our congregations, I had far more reason to be proud of my gabblers in an unknown tongue. I, of course, discovered no lapsus lingui in the performance, and after a due course of gibberish, the first class dismissed itself, with a brace of bows and an evident degree of self-satisfaction at being so perfect in the present after being so imperfect in the past. I own this first act of our solemn farce made me rather nervous against the next, which proved to be the Latin class, and I have no doubt to an adept would have seemed as much a Latin comedy as those performed at the Westminster school. We got through the second course quite correct, as before, and I found, with some satisfaction, that the third was a dish of English Syntax, where I _was_ able to detect flaws, and the heaps of errors that I had to arrest made me thoroughly sensible of the bliss of ignorance in the Greek and Latin. A general lesson in English reading ensued, through which we glided smoothly enough, till we came to a sandbank in the shape of a Latin quotation, which I was requested to English. It was something like this:--“Nemo mortalius omnibus hora sapit,” which I rendered, “No mortal knows at what hour the omnibus