his quarterly payments to Mr. Medlicott, according to their private agreement, with a punctuality that did him the greatest credit. One of these years was passed by Reuben in Brazil, on a special mission from the company, to examine and report on the state of the mines in their possession. He learned Portuguese expressly for the society of Buenos-Ayres, and contrived to make a good deal of noise on his return to England, by means of his contributions to the principal museums and scientific societies of the metropolis. Among other things, he presented the menagerie in the Regent's Park with a splendid collection of macaws and parrots, one of which proved a singularly eloquent bird; and, having been taught, during the voyage, to pronounce the name of the donor, helped to extend Mr. Medlicott's notoriety among a very numerous section of the public. BOOK THE TENTH. "Therefore I perceive a man may be twice a child before the age of dotage, and stand in need of son's bath before threescore."—Religio Medici. ARGUMENT. It is not the phenomenon of a few gray hairs, nor the stolen march of a wrinkle, that marks the melancholy turning of the tide of life, but the first overshadowing of the mind with despondencies and self-upbraidings, the first sense of the difficulty of hoping, and the vanity of intending and designing; when to purpose and to dream, once our easiest and most delightful occupations, have become a Sisyphian labour. Then have we begun to grow old, when the first sigh escapes us for the pledges of youth unredeemed, or when we look into the kingdom within us, and perceive how few of its abuses we have reformed in the palmy days of our power; then shuddering think that the time of the fulfilling of promises and the correction of faults has passed; that the day is far spent and the night is at hand; "When thoughts arise of errors past, Of youth that thought not upon age." These are the reflections that extinguish the "purpureum lumen," that put out the youthful fire; he that is acquainted with remorse, whether it comes of folly or of crime, is already stricken in years, as old as Priam, though he may bear himself as gallantly as Paris. But some there are to whom these dreary thoughts come late, and who uphold themselves with wondrous strength and bravery under the weight of misspent hours. Hope is often an Atlas that will bear a world of disappointments on his shoulders; and should he ever totter, Vanity is at hand, like another Hercules, to relieve him. How many men do we not see in the world more confident after a thousand failures, than others after a large measure of success? Men, who never know that they are conquered, but imagine themselves still mounting, and crow and clap their wings, as if the firmament was still their own, when with their heavy or broken pinions the height of the barley-mow is almost beyond their flight. Folly is attended by a troop of spurious merits, the apes of Wisdom's body-guard, a false fortitude which is nothing but groundless self-assurance, a bastard industry which is only a fatiguing idleness, a magnanimity from which nothing comes that is great. Ardelio grown old, and with one foot in the grave, is Ardelio still. A species of happiness follows, no doubt, in the train of the mimic virtues, which strutting Folly trails behind her in her conceited progress to the last. The man who has disappointed the world has thoroughly deceived himself, and fancies he is still the admiration and the hope of his age, when he has only earned the "monstrari digito," to be pointed at as one example more of the downcome of overweening confidence, with the additional moral of many shining talents lost for the want of a few plain ones. How benevolent is Hope, however, which, if it betrays a man in his early hours, cleaves to him often so faithfully in his latter days— "Hope! of all ills that men endure, The only cheap and universal cure! Thou captive's freedom, and thou sick man's health, To every taste a several meat! Thou strong retreat!-thou sure-entailed estate Which nought has power to alienate. Thou pleasant, honest flatterer, for none CHAPTER I. THE LAST EFFORT OF GENIUS. THE reader may probably recollect Barsac Square, in the environs of Hereford-one of the joint building-speculations of Bishop Wyndham and Mr. Barsac. Only three houses had ever been finished, and these, with other property of the same nature, had passed into the hands of Mr. Cox, in the final settlement of his pecuniary transactions with the Bishop. In one of these houses Mr. Medlicott took up his residence at a nominal rent, shortly after his return from Brazil. It was furnished with more expense and ostentation, than propriety or comfort; for the Barsacs themselves had occupied it for a season, and had fitted it up with their usual taste in such matters. Among other things, they had brought down from London that magnificent bed with the purple velvet curtains fringed with gold lace, which had been bought for their venerable son-in-law, at the time of his advancement to the mitre. It was placed in the principal bedroom, and actually slept in by Mr. Medlicott himself, although too stately a couch for the Bishop. Old Hannah Hopkins was no more, when Reuben returned from South America, and he had previously tried whether the cottage which she had long tenanted would suit him; but whether it was that its accommodation was defective, or that he found living at Chichester unpleasant, associated as that place was with the most signal failure of his life, he was certainly well pleased when the handsomer and more spacious dwelling at Hereford was placed at his disposal. There was probably a good deal of morbid pride in this preference of the three-storied house in Barsac Square, to a simple cottage in a quiet green lane. Time was when Mr. Medlicott's affectation would have led him to make the very opposite choice. Then, he fancied himself important enough to exalt and dignify the humblest abode. Now, he had probably some secret misgivings on that point, and felt no longer conscious of the power to elevate a cottage into a great house by conferring upon it the honour of his residence. How he carried on the war of life at this period-that is to say, how the sinews of war were provided-was a mystery to everybody; for his connection with the mining company ceased in consequence of his report, which offended a majority of the directors; and his receipts from Mr. Gosling had dwindled to zero-a quantity on which only mathematicians can operate with success. Yet he continued, one way or another, to hold up his head in the world, and there was nothing of seediness about him, no symptom as yet of bleakness; on the contrary, there was much more of the air and appearance of the prosperous than the decayed gentleman. As to external appearances, indeed, he seemed more careful about them now than ever, His family made as great a show in the cathedral on Sundays, as the Barsacs were wont to do when he was a boy; and though he adhered himself to the vegetarian diet (upon which he seemed to thrive uncommonly well), his mode of living was costly enough in other ways; his house was always open to his fanatical admirers from London, who made no scruple of Pigwidgeoning him as he had Pigwidgeoned them on many a former occasion; and he manifestly spared no expense, either in the education of his children, or on their dress and amusements, all of which were upon a scale which required a good fortune to support it. It was his taste, evidently, that predominated in all these matters. Everybody who knew his wife knew very well that it was not for her gratification little Chichester and his sisters were fantastically habited in scarlet tunics, with caps and feathers, and trotted about Hereford and its suburbs on minute cream-coloured ponies, attended by a black groom (the same Pompey who had lived with him in Picadilly), as if they were the children of a millionnaire, or the progeny of Ducrow or Astley. It was very well known that these were altogether Mr. Medlicott's whims and follies, and there was many a speculation upon the source that supplied such extravagance, as well as upon the issue and results of it. The Finchley school still existed; nay, was more flourishing than in former times, although Mr. Brough was now stricken in years, and beginning to be talked about as too old for the management of a large seminary. Mr. Medlicott was very kind to his ancient master, possibly a little too patronising-an air which had much grown upon him of late, and offended many of his acquaintances, while it merely curled the lips of others with a contemptuous smile. The older Mr. Brough grew, he was naturally only the more wedded to the system of instruction over which he had presided the greater part of his life; and as Mr. Medlicott had his mind full of a hundred new-fangled ideas on the same subject, some of which he had brought home with him from his visit to the United States, while others he was probably the author or inventor of himself, there was ample subject for controversy between old pupil and old master, and many a discussion they had upon such matters, sometimes calm and sometimes stormy enough. Harvey, the Quaker, happening one day to be present at a conversation of this kind, Reuben held forth with more than his usual ardour, upon what he considered the true code of educational principles, lamented that they had never been tried upon a sufficiently large scale, spoke of the experiment as the noblest that could engage the mind of the philosopher or the philanthropist, and prophesied splendid moral revolutions and glorious intellectual millenniums, to date from the happy day of the realisation of his views. Harvey listened, as usual, with his eyes and mouth, no less than his ears, drinking in all these fine phrases and admirable speculations, as if he was sitting at the feet of a Plato or an Aristotle. Poor Mr. Brough was overwhelmed with the fluency of his opponent, and could |