subject of our youthful studies. Pinnock's Catechism of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge' was a joke to the multiplicity of his questions. From the moment I began to learn the Latin grammar, he was perpetually down upon me with regard to the declensions, and 'As in præsenti,' seizing every unguarded moment to inquire, for instance, what the genitive case plural number of Lapis, a stone,' was, and putting me through all the tenses of the irregular verbs, as if he took a malicious pleasure in their anomalous conjugation, always declaring, at the end of our interview, that I knew nothing whatever about it, and averring that I should terminate my career as a professional dustman-an occupation which, in those days, seemed positively cheerful to me compared with the study of syntax.

When I was your age' (nine), 'you young rascal,' (such were the endearing epithets with which he occasionally greeted us)- when I was your age, I could read " Ovid's Metamorphoses "straight off without a dictionary. Can you? No, I dare say not. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Tell your father to buy you "Dryden's Ovid" immediately, or-stop, I'll give it you myself.' And down he took that excellent and highly-instructive work from his library. The reader will probably recollect the nature of the anecdotes which it contains, and how admirably they are adapted for the perusal of children. It was my first introduction to the classics.

During the winter evenings my brother Tom and I were in the habit of going to tea at his house occasionally. This was curiously enough looked upon in the light of a recreation by our papa and mamma, who, no doubt, derived pleasure from the society of Grampus. As for ourselves, we considered it a sort of hebdomadal sacrifice to which we were bound to submit for the benefit of our intellects. The old gentleman brewed his souchong, rang for the muffins and seed-cake (I have contracted a violent antipathy to carraways from the painful associations which their flavour

recalls), and then proceeded to recite whole odes of Horace, to which we listened in silent awe with our months full of bread and butter, or quoted a lengthy passage from the Rape of the Lock,' compared with which we were told that Marmion' was simple twaddle. One unlucky evening, I had preceded Tom by about half an hour, and found Grampus reading the Morning Chronicle.' Laying down the paper, he welcomed me, and began retailing the news of the day, in which the town of Philadelphia chanced to be mentioned. Of course you know where it is?' he asked.

'Yes, uncle,' said I, 'in America.' North or South?'

'South,' said I, after some hesitation.

''Pon my word, you're a pretty fellow!' roared Grampus, waxing wrath. How old are you, sir?'

'Nine, uncle, next Tuesday week.'

And don't know more of geography than that! You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Go home, sir, directly, and tell your father you don't know where Philadelphia is.'

Returning in deep dismay after this contretemps, I met my brother on the road, and confided to him the reason of my disgrace.

'Which did you say, North or South?' asked Tom, who was rather a sharp boy for his age. I told him. All right,' said Tom;

'then of course it must be the other.' And off he trotted to my great uncle's house.

'Tom!' said Grampus, after greeting him; 'before you take off your greatcoat, tell me, where Philadelphia is.'

In North America,' cried Tom, with tremendous confidence.

'Bravo! that's a good boy, there's half a sovereign for you!' said Grampus, pouring out the tea. I will do Tom the justice to say that he subsequently made over five shillings to me: but it was some time before I was restored to my uncle's favour.

It will be gathered from the foregoing anecdote that our anticipations of Christmas Day with Grampus were those of pleasure not altogether

unalloyed. At the same time it must be remembered that most of us had hardly completed, or were only just emerging from our teens, an age when the prospect of a good dinner and a game of snapdragons go far towards insuring jollity. The mince-pies alone would have restored our equanimity and banished dull care from our breasts while we stowed away their contents-elsewhere.

was a

We enter the room, then, in single file, with smiling, rosy faces; and wishing our revered relative a merry Christmas and a happy new year ('compliments of the season phrase not then in vogue), walk up to him one by one to be kissed, a ceremony which he went through after a fashion peculiar to himself. As soon as we came within reach of his arm, he pounced upon us in regular order, drew us each violently towards him, slipped a half-sovereign into our hands, imprinted a hasty salute upon our cheeks, and then as hastily thrust us off. Whether he thought, as an old bachelor, and being unaccustomed to the habits of children, that we might bite him playfully, or whether he conceived we should notice too plainly his own dental incapabilities, I cannot say, but this was his method of osculation, and a very remarkable one it was. Kissing is a habit which does not exist in all families. I confess that I have rather a tendency to indulge in it myself, having a fair field for the exercise of that accomplishment among my female cousins. I believe I inherit it from my mother's side, and trust it may be transmitted to future generations.

There was a curious old clock in the hall; none of your vulgar modern timepieces, all head and no body, supported on flimsy brackets, but a good old-fashioned concern, standing about eight feet high, in a walnut case with a big door, which, being opened, revealed a little perpendicular rope-walk of strings, chains, weights, and pulleys. The pendulum was as large as a cheeseplate, and wagged to and fro with such a majestic tick that you would as soon have thought of digging the Great Mogul in the ribs as trying to interfere with its motion. As for the face,

it was a regular horological encyclopædia. There was nothing that it didn't tell you. Besides indications of the hour hand, and the minute hand, and the seconds hand, it informed you of the day of the week, the state of the atmosphere, and described the earth's orbit. My brother Tom, who has been looking over this manuscript, declares that there was one department in the works designed with a view to ascertain the latitude and longitude of any given place at a moment's notice; but this I admit I do not remember, and must beg the reader to receive the statement with caution, as Tom, though a very well-meaning young man, has a habit of romancing which has much grown on him of late.

My great uncle being, as I have said, a very old-fashioned gentleman, had fixed on the unearthly hour of four o'clock for dinner. If any of my readers have ever been condemned to dine at that excessively inconvenient time they will fully sympathise with the protest which I record against this inhuman, and, I trust, now happily exploded practice. Dinner at four o'clock is a social anachronism almost amounting to a crime. You may dine at one, or even at two, and (with the intervention of a cup of tea) be prepared for supper at eight; or you may make a substantial lunch in the middle of the day and be ready for your principal repast at seven; but four o'clock is neither one thing nor the other. If you have lunched you have, as the phrase goes, spoilt your dinner. You make feeble efforts to eat, and abandon your knife and fork. The consequence is that byand-by, at supper-time, you are famishing and there is no supper for you. If, on the other hand, you have not lunched, you sit down to your feast like a starving man, eat ravenously, and dyspepsia is the inevitable result. A person who

invites his friends to dine at four is guilty of cruelty to animals, and ought to be proceeded against under Martin's Act.

For us children, to be sure, it did not so much matter. I cannot answer for the experience of others, but I never yet met with a youth

under the age of discretion who was not ready to eat cheerfully on the shortest notice and at any time. It seems to be a provision of nature that children should be always ready for natural provisions. The instant we came out of church (where, I fear, we had been far more occupied in criticising the evergreen decorations and indulging in visions of turkey and plum-pudding than in listening to Parson Blowhard's sermon) we were regaled with an enormous piece of currant cake, which, however, did not much interfere with our appetite at four. So when the clock had struck that hour, and the cuckoo on it had fluttered punctually after its usual fashion, and retired into the little door just as coolly as if there had been no Christmas Day at all, Peter opened the drawing-room door, and in a voice quaking with emotion-partly due to the occasion, but principally out of dread of his master-exclaimed

'Pleesir dinner's on the tablesir!' At that instant Grampus rose to his legs and gave his arm to my mother; papa followed with my maiden aunt, Tabitha, a lady of few personal attractions but of untold wealth, from whom we had great expectations, but who subsequently retired from this sphere bequeathing her property in equal shares between the Society for the Encouragement of Indigent Organ-grinders and the Metropolitan Dustman's Shirt and Collar Association two excellent institutions now unhappily become obsolete. My brothers, sisters, and I brought up the rear, descending the stairs with great gravity, except Tom, who insisted on executing a sort of brief Feejee war-dance on every third step, until Grampus, whom we believed to be safely out of sight, caught a glimpse of his shadow on the opposite wall.

'Halloa there, you young scapegrace! what are you about?' shouted my uncle.

Tom muttered out something about losing his shoe, and with great presence of mind knelt down on the landing to untie one of his highlows and tie it up again. Presently we all entered the dining-room, where there was always a mingled smell of

port wine and French polish. We gathered round the table and sidled into our places. My uncle said grace, and the covers were removed by Peter (who was by this time in a state of awfully nervous vibration) and Betty, a female domestic in a very black dress and a very white apron. As we sat down in all about twelve, and as children are addicted to that summary and often indecorous manner of feeding known as bolting their dinner, it was generally understood that no one was to begin until we had been all helped. This injunction, however, not extending to the rolls already placed before us, we employed the interval in consuming them and in disposing the napkins in which they were wrapped very tightly round our waists.

At last every one was served and we all began to ply our knives and forks. What a precious clattering was heard, what a Babel of voices as the wine went round (we little ones were allowed one glass apiece, and generally drank it in a diluted form)! How quickly soup, fish, turkey, roast beef, with all their accompaniments, disappeared before us! This was the only day in the year on which we were allowed to choose a dish at table, and of course we selected all the unwholesome ones.

It was a beautiful and gratifying sight to behold honest Peter staggering into the room under the weight of that summum bonum of our expectations, that long-looked for consummation of Christmas hopes-the PLUM-PUDDING; an enormous affair quivering in a little sea of liquid fire and surmounted by a generous sprig of holly and red berries. What a graceful contour it presented in that lovely spheroid form, gently merging into corrugations where the pudding-cloth had left a pleasing impress! I say pleasing, because I truly and conscientiously believe that no good Christmas pudding can be made but in a bag. It has become part of the tradition and cannot be omitted. I have dined at houses in later years where this noble emblem of Yuletide has appeared in an artificial shape, such as that which the baser gallantine and the more effeminate blanc-mange are wont to as

sume, and when the powdered menial has offered it to me I have declined the gross imposture. No; if I am to eat pudding at Christmas it shall be a Christmas pudding.

When the cloth had been removed, a fine polished surface of dark Spanish mahogany was revealed, on which the richly-chased épergne, the delicately-cut decanters and finger-glasses sparkled in the light of a dozen spermaceti candles. The silver, too, did ample credit to Peter's care and plate-powder, being of a dazzling brilliancy. Every article on the table was mirrored in its surface, and we children found a source of instant gratification in beholding each other's faces reflected, topsy-turvy, on opposite sides of the festive board. When the servants left the room, my uncle filled a bumper of port, having previously executed a similar office for my mother and Aunt Tabitha, who always sat on either side of him. This was a signal for 'hands round the table,' an important ceremony in our eyes, and without which Christmas Day would have been as a thing of nought. It consisted in everyone's inserting his or her palm into that of his or her neighbour and using it as a pumphandle for the space of half a minute with appropriate action. This parallel is the more complete because it actually did draw water from some eyes; my Aunt Tab, for instance, being always ready to cry on the shortest notice. I do not mean my readers to infer from this circumstance that she was in the least degree unhappy, far from it. On these occasions she was usually, for her, in excellent spirits; but this was her peculiar mode of indicating hilarity. It is the way with some people. I have heard of individuals who have a morbid inclination to laugh at a funeral. Perhaps philosophers may be able to give some common solution to these paradoxical phenomena of nature. After the solemn rite of 'hands round the table' had been concluded, Grampus proceeded to amuse us by a variety of entertainments, chiefly based upon and in connection with the dessert and dinner service. He peeled oranges in the most ingenious and apparently mira

culous manner, turning the rind inside out into hemispheres of perfect symmetry without spilling a drop of the juice, and then fashioning it into miniature cocked-hats, little boats, and fictitious porkers. He ate imaginary wax tapers, previously cut out of the heart of a Ribstone pippin by the simple aid of a cheese-taster, having added a slice of burnt almond thereto for a wick. He converted a dinner-napkin into the likeness of a rabbit, which sprang about his knees and up his arm with an almost supernatural effect. He produced the most delightful music from a finger-glass, three tumblers, and an empty decenter, and was immensely gratified by our detecting it to be

Rory o' More,' played to psalm-time with a fruit-knife. He became quite purple in the face in consequence of the exertions which he made to toss up three apples in the air consecutively, after the manner of the streetjugglers, and found a brief respite from his labours in the act of cutting up one of them with immense care, throwing the spiral parings over Aunt Tab's head and declaring that the letters which it formed on the floor behind her would be the initials of the gentleman whom she would make happy for life. They happened to alight in the form of P. S., which we, with the charming simplicity and ready wit characteristic of our years, immediately divined to be an omen of her ultimate union with Mr. Peter Slowman, my uncle's butler, a supposition which was fraught with all the greater horror in consequence of that gentleman's devoted attachment to Mrs. Colinder, the cook, down stairs. After everybody's health had been drunk all round, and the conversation was beginning to take a political turn (my uncle was a stanch Tory, and when once he began to discuss the Melbourne administration there was no stopping him), my mother would give a private signal to Aunt Tab and my sisters, who with one consent arose and left the room. Of course we little ones went with them, but instead of ascending to the drawingroom again we used to make a bolt down-stairs to see how Sally was getting on, and how she had liked

her dinner. Sally was our handmaiden, pretty well stricken in years, and a faithful servant in our nursery ever since we could remember. She had nursed us through measles, hooping-cough, scarlatina, and, in short, all the ills which infant flesh is heir to. I thoroughly believe there is nothing that good creature would not have undergone for our sakes. She had but one foible, and that, considering that we lived in a garrison town was a pardonable one -she was consumed by an unextinguishable passion for marines. I am not prepared to say that she was insensible to the attractions of the line,' or that if an eligible artilleryman had come in her way she would have treated him with incivility, but marines were her weakness, and she married several: of course I don't mean at the same time, but in turn. Poor Sally was very unfortunate in her attachments, and had become a widow twice within our recollection; but neither these matrimonial alliances nor the domestic afflictions which followed them interfered with the faithful discharge of her duties to us. For years she reigned supreme in our nursery, and in the case of fraternal quarrels there was no appeal from her decision. Sometimes she asked for a holiday to see her husband embark, or welcome him home from that widely-extended tract of country known as 'foreign parts,' or went away for an hour or so to get her pension or another marriage licence; but through all her vicissitudes she remained constant to her trust: and attached as she was to her amphibious lovers, I believe she would have cheerfully relinquished the most attractive marine rather than quit our service. Many a letter have we directed for her according to a model address which she always kept, and from which no orthographical deviation was permitted, until she changed her partner.

Mister corporal John Taylor, exquire his madgestis ship Harrythewsir lying off Spithedd

or in the Meddytrainyen

or ELSEWHERE.

In this comprehensive superscription, whose chief merit seemed to lie in the wide field of conjecture which it opened to the Post-office authorities, Sally had the most unbounded confidence, declaring that she always have heard tell that it would be sartain sure to find her old man sometime hows'ever;' but as she never prepaid her letters, nor expected any answer until her husband's ship was paid off, the probability is that Mr. Taylor was spared the trouble of deciphering at least half of her communications. We found Sally, then, after dinner, over a dish of tea with Mrs. Colinder, my uncle's cook and housekeeper, a middle-aged lady in a black bombazine dress and burnt-umber-coloured wig, who entertained certain theories of a peculiar and exceedingly original system of theology, which she and Sally were never tired of discussing, and which they seemed to have chiefly derived while sitting under' an eminent dissenting divine by the name of Blenkinsop. This extraordinary expression has I believe since been commonly accepted in its proper sense; but at the time, and owing to our limited acquaintance with modern metaphor, I remember we regarded it in the light of a religious but highly uncomfortable ceremony.

How well I recollect that cosy kitchen with its ample fireplace and complicated roasting-jack of wheels, chains, and pulleys, attached to the wall!--the comfortable old Windsorchairs, with green-baize cushions, the round table covered with a cloth of the same material, on which Dodd's Bible lay, bound in rough calf, with The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain,' The Complete Letterwriter,' and Mrs. Colinder's tortoiseshell spectacles. Nor can I forget dear old Mouser, a black tom-cat of great antiquity that purred unceasingly upon the hearth, and kindly bore with all our teazing. Across the passage, there was the butler's pantry too-a chamber which is always associated in my mind with a peculiar perfume of oil of vitriol and candle-ends. Here Peter was wont to sit and peruse odd numbers of the Gentleman's Magazine,' and