passed as pleasantly as any wet day, perhaps, that was ever spent in an inn. Winning had some private conversation with Reuben about the University, in the course of which he soon discovered that his friend seemed already to have almost made up his mind to devote himself there to any but a definite course of study, either with a view to mere academic distinction, or to the main business of life. In fact, if a desultory career can be properly called a career at all, Reuben Medlicott appeared bent upon pursuing one, and Henry Winning was confirmed in the opinion he had hazarded more than once before, that his friend was much too clever, or at least had too many friends about him, whose faith in his genius was too implicit.

The following morning at five o'clock, Primrose opening his eyes and drawing the curtains, saw Winning at the window speculating on the prospects of the weather, in a dress very similar to that formerly worn in acts of public penance.

66 "Well," he said drowsily, "how does it look?-any sign of amend

ment?"

"Every promise of a glorious morning," said Winning.

"Then I suppose we must leave that dear merry quakeress behind us," said Primrose, with an affected sigh.

When the Vicar's party met at breakfast, the Cambridge students were already some leagues from Barmouth, for the day had kept the undertaking which the dawn had given, and was all the lovelier for the contrast with the gloomy weather which had kept the tourists in confinement. The Vicar would have been happy, had his plans been consistent with those of his son's friends, but that was not the case; and indeed it suited the Medlicotts better on many accounts to jog quietly along with the quakers; and this accordingly they did in a very enjoyable manner; the only drawback being that the same vehicle was not large enough to carry them all. This was remedied by the hiring of two rough surefooted ponies, upon which the Doctor and Reuben rode generally, but now and then they picked up a sidesaddle for Mary Hopkins, who was probably the first quakeress who was ever seen on horseback in England.

We cannot afford to travel at the tardy rate which they found rapid enough for their pleasure and convenience. Slow, however, as their progress was, the tour was completed, or at least they had all returned to the house of Dr. Page, before Mrs. Medlicott had fathomed the transcendental sermons, or Reuben perfectly mastered the Welch harp and the language of the Llewellyns

and Cadwalladers. The Doctor made them all comfortable for near a week (during which Rueben preserved a strict incognito), and the worthy son of Esculapius would have willingly detained them much longer, pretending that at least a month's fumigation was indispensable to purify a house after the Pigwidgeons. But the Vicar argued that unless he was actually on the spot, the apothecary and his brood would never give up possession; and Hannah Hopkins, whose oft-repeated rule it was to be " merry and wise," had already exceeded the limits of the longest vacation she had ever enjoyed, and was inflexible in her resolve to return to her school with the greatest possible expedition.

Everybody was sorry to part with the kind Doctor, but nobody so much as Reuben, who would indeed have been ungrateful if he had not been attached to a man who had shown him so much hearty friendship.

The last thing Dr. Page said to him was in a tone of goodhumoured warning

"Beware of that laughing quakeress."

BOOK THE FOURTH.

Gratiano. Well, keep me company but two years more, thou shalt not know the sound of thine own tongue.

Antonio. Farewell, I'll grow a talker.

Gratiano. Thanks, i' faith, for silence only is commendable in a neat's tongue

dried.

ARGUMENT.

WITH most men, as well as with Sindbad, or Captain Lemuel Gulliver, human life consists of a succession of ventures or voyages, literal or metaphorical expeditions; though it is only the luck of a few such pets of my lady Fortune to discover valleys of diamonds, or marvellous flying islands. But who has not his "travel's history," let it be prodigious as Munchausen's or dull as any modern tour in the Alps or Apennines? Which of us have not our voyages, on which we set out, when "the tide in the affairs of men" happens to serve, with more or less ballast in our hold, with more or less capital in money or brains to trade with, more or less of the breeze of hope to fan our sails; and from which (if we escape the perils of the deep) we return now and then to port with more or less reputation or profit? The first attempt is usually a little coasting trip to school, where we probably gain a small commodity of Greek and Latin, and think we have made pretty good merchandise; at least we have done as well as our neighbours, which ought in reason to content us. The second adventure is a little more adventurous: a cruise to one of the famous marts of learning, that time-honoured university, for instance, to which the young voyager of these pages-would he were a Jason for the reader's sake!—is now careering in his hopeful argosy,

with portly sail

Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood.

And now, if the prospect of the studious university daunts any timorous gentle reader, filling his imagination with notions of the endless jangling of bells, the tiresome and ponderous routine of lectures, not omitting "the stale, flat, and unprofitable" discourse of Commons, where punning takes rank as wit, and the dinner is often worthy of a better company; we desire and entreat of him at once to dismiss from his mind all such

frightful apprehensions, for with none of these horrors will he be visited and afflicted. We shall not ask him to attend a single lecture, set him to work the slightest problem, nor throw in his eyes the minutest grain of the dust of the schools; in fact, it is for none of your hum-drum purposes our coming man has come to Cambridge. He has no notion of breaking his fine genius on the dull wheel of academic duties, and still less thought of bounding his aspirations with the winning of academic honours. He begins to be pricked with the spur of a loftier ambition, and to feel a craving within him which the glory of doubling the cube, or squaring the circle, will never satisfy. "Sic itur ad astra" is the direction of the only road he is inclined to travel, for the man that is destined to have a voice in the commonwealth, and make a noise, and a loud one, in the world, necessarily soars above the curriculum of his college, and scorns the low spheres of the mathematicians. The points we are now to carry in his person are neither the Hebrew points, nor those of geometry, which we leave to the mediocrities and the multitude. We hope to make a much finer figure than any in Euclid; and that is not to be done by listening abjectly and sheepishly when everybody is talking and haranguing, ranting and declaiming, or, at the very least, prattling and prosing round about us. In this talking world (for what better definition is it possible to give of it), how is a man to be distinguished but by out-talking it? It is for the plebeian spirits to "lend their ears," while men of nobler strain give tongue like Anthony; nor let it be said or insinuated that mighty talking is incompatible with mighty doing; for, surely, if it is true that "words are things," it follows, by all the rules of all the logicians from Aristotle to Whately, that the vulgar distinction between the man of words and the man of business is not to be maintained in solemn argument. Why, the tongue has ever been distinguished and exalted above all other parts of the human frame by the express title of "the busy member." Beyond dispute it is the busiest member of most Parliaments, to say nothing of its activity in the country at large, when Parliament is prorogued; or of its proverbial nimbleness in domestic discussions. In short, we question not but the reader is now completely satisfied of the truth of Gratiano's remark, that "silence is only commendable in a neat's tongue dried;" and has made up his mind to say with Antonio, "I'll grow a talker."

CHAPTER I.

DEPARTURE FOR COLLEGE.

"ONE would think," said the Vicar, "that nobody ever left this neighbourhood before to go to college."

"I think we may safely say," said Mr. Pigwidgeon," that we never sent a young man up to either University with such a

splendid career before him. I'm a plain blunt man, who say what I think, and don't say what I don't think. That forehead of his is worth ten thousand a year; if it was mine, I would not exchange it for a dukedom."

Mrs. Medlicott thought of asking the apothecary home to dine; he had not dined at the Vicarage since he turned it into an hospital.

Somebody else who was present inquired what Reuben was intended for.

"Very little matter what he is intended for," said Mr. Pigwidgeon, taking it upon him to reply; "the young man is fit for anything; whatever profession he chooses, we'll see him at the tip-top of it before he is thirty."

This secured Mr. Pigwidgeon the dinner.

Mr. Pigwidgeon was a deliberate flatterer; he lived by it in part, as he lived by administering other less agreeable things: but the Vicar and his wife heard nearly the same language regarding Reuben from almost everybody about them, until it was not very wonderful that the mother's head was turned almost round, for it was as much as the father could do to keep his own steady.

If Reuben's departure for school made such a sensation among his relations and acquaintances, you may conceive the excitement caused by his setting out for the University. The fuss that was made about so common-place an event was absolutely ridiculous. Mrs. Winning, of Sunbury, gave a fête champêtre. Matthew Cox gave the heartiest of entertainments at his country-house, and made Reuben a present of the "Encyclopædia Britannica." Canon Oldport, who was always glad of an excuse for giving a dinner, invited Reuben and his father to a remarkably jovial party of eight; the effect of which upon the host was a fit of the gout, which confined him to his chair for the same number of weeks. Hannah Hopkins insisted upon every body drinking tea with her, and made one of her huge "cut-and-come-again" cakes for the occasion; and it was not without some management Reuben escaped being encumbered with half a ton of it on his journey to Cambridge. Every body did something hospitable but Mr. Pigwidgeon, who pretended that one of his daughters had a bad attack of influenza. The apothecary, however, showed not only the greatest willingness but the greatest anxiety to be included himself in all the festivities of the neighbourhood, and he never forgave Mr. Cox for not inviting him to the banquet he gave in honour of Reuben.