"Gently, my good friend," said I-parce, precor, or you will force me to say, ‘ibimus unà ambo, flentes valido connexi fœdere.'"

Clutterbuck's eyes watered still more when he heard the grateful sounds of what to him was the mother tongue. He surveyed me from head to foot with an air of benign and fatherly complacency, and dragging forth from its sullen rest a large arm-chair, on whose cushions of rusty horsehair sat an eternal cloud of classic dust, too sacred to be disturbed, he plumped me down upon it before I was aware of the cruel hospitality.

"Oh! my nether garments," thought I. "Quantus sudor inerit Bedoso to restore you to your pristine purity!"

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But whence come you?" said my host, who cherished rather a formal and antiquated method of speech.

"From the Pythian games," said I; "the campus hight New market. Do I see right, or is not yon insignis juvenis marvellously like you? Of a surety he rivals the Titans, if he is only a seven months' child!"

"Now truly, my worthy friend," answered Clutterbuck, "you indulge in jesting! The boy is my nephew, a goodly child, and a painstaking. I hope he will thrive at our gentle mother. He goes to Trinity next October. Benjamin Jeremiah, my lad, this is my worthy friend and benefactor, of whom I have often spoken; go and order him of our best-he will partake of our repast!"

"No, really," I began; but Clutterbuck gently placed the hand, whose strength of affection I had already so forcibly experienced, upon my mouth. "Pardon me, my friend,"

said he. "No stranger should depart till he had broken bread with us; how much more then a friend! Go, Benjamin Jeremiah, and tell your aunt that Mr. Pelham will dine with us; and order, furthermore, that the barrel of oysters sent unto us as a present by my worthy friend Dr. Swallow'em, be dressed in the fashion that seemeth best; they are a classic dainty, and we shall think of our great masters the ancients whilst we devour them. And-stop, Benja

min Jeremiah, see that we have the wine with the black seal; and-now-go, Benjamin Jeremiah!"

"Well, my old friend," said I when the door closed upon the sallow and smileless nephew, "how do you love the connubial yoke? Do you give the same advice as Socrates? I hope, at least, it is not from the same experience.”

"Hem!" answered the grave Christopher, in a tone that struck me as somewhat nervous and uneasy, "you are become quite a humorist since we parted. I suppose you have been warming your wit by the lambent fires of Horace and Aristophanes!"

"No," said I, "the living allow those whose toilsome lot it is to mix constantly with them but little time to study the monuments of the dead. But, in sober earnest, are you as happy as I wish you?"

Clutterbuck looked down for a moment, and then, turning towards the table, laid one hand upon a manuscript, and pointed with the other to his books. "With this society," said he, "how can I be otherwise?"

I gave him no reply, but put my hand upon his manuscript. He made a modest and coy effort to detain it, but I knew that writers were like women, and, making use of no displeasing force, I possessed myself of the paper.

It was a treatise on the Greek participle. My heart sickened within me; but, as I caught the eager glance of the poor author, I brightened up my countenance into an expression of pleasure, and appeared to read and comment upon the difficiles nuga with an interest commensurate to his own. Meanwhile the youth returned. He had much of that delicacy of sentiment which always accompanies mental cultivation, of whatever sort in may be. He went, with a scarlet blush over his thin face, to his uncle, and whispered something in his ear which, from the angry embarrassment it appeared to occasion, I was at no loss to divine.

"Come," said I, 66 we are too long acquainted for ceremony. Your placens uxor, like all ladies in the same pre

dicament, thinks your invitation a little unadvised; and, in real earnest, I have so long a ride to perform that I would rather eat your oysters another day!"

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"No, no," said Clutterbuck, with greater eagerness than his even temperament was often hurried into betraying"no, I will go and reason with her myself. 'Wives, obey your husbands,' saith the preacher!" And the quondam senior wrangler almost upset his chair in the perturbation with which he arose from it.

I laid my hand upon him. "Let me go myself," said I, "since you will have me dine with you. 'The sex is ever to a stranger kind,' and I shall probably be more persuasive than you, in despite of your legitimate authority."

So saying, I left the room, with a curiosity more painful than pleasing, to see the collegian's wife. I arrested the manservant, and ordered him to usher and announce

me.

I was led instanter into the apartment where I had discovered all the signs of female inquisitiveness which I have before detailed. There I discovered a small woman, in a robe equally slatternly and fine, with a sharp-pointed nose, small, cold, grey eyes, and a complexion high towards the cheek-bones, but waxing of a light green before it reached the wide and querulous mouth, which, well I ween, seldom opened to smile upon the unfortunate possessor of her charms. She, like the Rev. Christopher, was not without her companions; a tall meagre woman, of advanced age, and a girl, some years younger than herself, were introduced to me as her mother and sister.

My entrée occasioned no little confusion, but I knew well how to remedy that. I held out my hand so cordially to the wife, that I enticed, though with evident reluctance, two bony fingers into my own, which I did not dismiss without a most mollifying and affectionate squeeze; and drawing my chair close towards her, began conversing as familiarly as if I had known the whole triad for years. declared my joy at seeing my old friend so happily settled

I

commented on the improvement of his looks-ventured a sly joke at the good effects of matrimony-praised a cat couchant, worked in worsted by the venerable hand of the eldest matron-offered to procure her a real cat of the true Persian breed, black ears four inches long, with a tail like a squirrel's; and then slid, all at once, into the unauthorised invitation of the good man of the house.

"Clutterbuck," said I, "has asked me very warmly to stay dinner; but, before I accepted his offer, I insisted upon coming to see how far it was confirmed by you. Gentlemen, you are aware, my dear madam, know nothing of these matters, and I never accept a married man's invitaiton till it has the sanction of his lady; I have an example of that at home. My mother (Lady Frances) is the besttempered woman in the world; but my father could no more take the liberty (for I may truly call it such) to ask even his oldest friend to dinner, without consulting the mistress of the house, than he could think of flying. No one (says my mother, and she says what is very true) can tell about the household affairs but those who have the management of them; and in pursuance of this aphorism, I dare not accept any invitation in this house, except from its mistress."

"Really," said Mrs. Clutterbuck, colouring with mingled embarrassment and gratification, "you are very considerate and polite, Mr. Pelham: I only wish Mr. Clutterbuck paid half your attention to these things; nobody can tell the trouble and inconvenience he puts me to. If I had known a little time before that you were coming-but now I fear we have nothing in the house; but if you can partake of our fare, such as it is, Mr. Pelham

"Your kindness enchants me," I exclaimed, “and I no longer scruple to confess the pleasure I have in accepting my old friend's offer."

This affair being settled, I continued to converse for some minutes with as much vivacity as I could summon to my aid, and when I went once more to the library, it was with

the comfortable impression of having left those as friends, whom I had visited as foes.

The dinner hour was four, and till it came Clutterbuck and I amused ourselves "in commune wise and sage." There was something high in the sentiments and generous in the feelings of this man, which made me the more regret the bias of mind which rendered them so unavailing. At college he had never (illis dissimilis in nostro tempore natis!) cringed to the possessors of clerical power. In the duties of his station as dean of the college, he was equally strict to the black cap and the lordly hat. Nay, when one of his private pupils, whose father was possessed of more church preferment than any nobleman in the peerage, disobeyed his repeated summons, and constantly neglected to attend his instructions, he sent for him, resigned his tuition, and refused any longer to accept a salary which the negligence of his pupil would not allow him to requite. In his clerical tenets he was high: in his judgment of others he was mild. His knowledge of the liberty of Greece was not drawn from the ignorant historian of her Republics; nor did he find in the contemplative mildness and gentle philosophy of the ancients nothing but a sanction for modern bigotry and existing abuses.

1

It was a remarkable trait in his conversation, that though he indulged in many references to the old authors, and allusions to classic customs, he never deviated into the innumerable quotations with which his memory was stored. No words, in spite of all the quaintness and antiquity of his dialect, purely Latin or Greek, ever escaped his lips, except in our engagements at capping verses, or when he was allured into accepting a challenge of learning from some of its pretenders; then indeed, he could pour forth

'It is really a disgrace to our university, that any of its colleges should accept as a reference, or even tolerate as an author, the presumptuous bigot who has bequeathed to us, in his "History of Greece," the masterpiece of a declaimer without energy, and of a pedant without learning.