fashion! My good cousin," he added, seeing I coloured, "though I allow much for the blood of the Cliffords, this must be whipt out of you, or you will be miserable, both here and in the world."

"Yet I have heard Hastings himself say," replied I, not over pleased, "that friendship, like Cæsar's arms, will throw down all distinctions,

'Who e'er is brave and virtuous is a Roman.'"

Well, perhaps he believed so himself in the solitudes of Sedbergh, where there was no distinction to throw down; here we order things differently."

"But is not nature, nature," asked I, "and every where the same?"

"Undoubtedly; and it is because the change you complain of is mere nature, only finding itself in another situation, that your friend thus slights you."

"I would not think as you do for all the world," said I, with decision.

"Many have said the same," answered be drily, "on this very spot too, and yet have come round to my opinion."

"But I know not that he has slighted me, after all," said I, gathering courage, rather indignant at my tutor's suspicion. "Bravo!" replied he; "keep up your gallant spirit. Go back to Christ Church; assert your equality with Foljambe Park, and see what will come of it."

It is astonishing how these words, "equality with Foljambe Park," unnerved me.

The inequality between me and that dear place, and the still dearer person who formed its chief or only value, had been too much the object of my secret lamentation not to make the speech sink deep into my feelings, and I gave a long-drawn sigh, which surprized my good tutor, fresh as he thought me.

"Come," said he, "this heart-burning is rather too much. I allow a good deal for a sudden disappointment to a warm young mind; but as you are to live in the world, I would teach you the world, and the first lesson I would give is, the

impolicy, not to call it degradation, to the inferior, that attends unequal friendships."

"Impolicy!" cried 1; "degredation to love Hastings, or to have been won by his love!"

"Mistake me not," said my mentor; "it cannot degrade you to love Hastings, but it may to court his love, particularly if it is on the wane, or cannot bear the test of being transplanted from a wholesome natural soil to a hot-bed like this. You say yourself, that Eton, you feared, caused some alteration, and, be assured, Oxford will not mend the matter. Whatever may be the other advantages of Alma Mater, this one is great and certain, that she is an epitome of that world to which she is the first real entrance. You there first see life as it will be, and characters as they are, and here you will be really initiated in the knowledge of that demarcation which seperates society into its different ranks."

"I hate all demarcation," exclaimed I, almost angrily, "that can separate kindred minds. At school we always thought alike. He loved nobody so well, indeed nobody else, and said we should go through the world together."

Fothergill gave his accustomed smile, though he allowed that perhaps Hastings might have thought himself sincere when he said this.

"Perhaps !" cried I, "thought himself! O, how little do you know him !”

"We shall see," said my mentor. He then paused, as if I had made him doubt; but resuming-"I love your confiding disposition," said he, "and may it not be disappointed. Yet the coldness shown already, shows also whereabouts Hastings considers you. He has already caught the esprit de corps of his proud college, which animated its very porter when he so saucily told you they had very few Queen's men as visited there.'-But even without the aids of Christ Church to imbue him with all the vanities of youth, his position in the world alone, even his very talents, which have already shown themselves in all the eccentricities in which young high-born men, and rich withal, are allowed here to indulge themselves, would make me fear for your happiness with him. Though here but six months, he has already distinguished himself as a sort of Alcibiades, in both luxury, gallautry, and the love of being conspicuous. With so much

mercury in his composition-which, though dormant at Sedbergh and under his father's roof, where sentiment and romance might have been the order of the day, has been warined into activity by the brisker atmosphere of Oxford and iiberty-how could he fail to make himself notorious, as a flirt with the women, and a renowner with the men.* In the first of these characters I fear he has already done much mischief to the daughter of one of our most respectable heads of houses, whose head he has turned by attentions which of course, meaning nothing, can be little less than fraudulent; as Clara Meadows, the poor girl I mean, has even now found to her

cost.

"I have mentioned Alcibiades," continued Fothergill, after a momentary pause, " because we lectured about him yesterday in Plutarch; but take also what Marmontel says of him, turning him, indeed, into a Frenchman. 'La Nature et la fortune sembloient avoir conspire au bonheur d'Alcibiade. Richesses, talens, beaute, naissance, la fleur de l'age et de la sante; que de titres pour avoir tous les ridicules!"

1 Own, I thought this a bitter sarcasm, and could not believe a word of it. I accused Fothergill, in my own mind, of prejudice, perhaps of envy, at any rate of petty tyranny. Never would I believe that Hastings, who had so exclusively loved me at school, and introduced me to his aristocratic father and angelic sister, as almost an equal, could be proud, much less ridiculous.

My looks spoke my feelings and Fothergill, seeing my emotion, good-naturedly, to change the conversation, said be would give me some tea at his rooms; an honor which, offered to a freshman and under-graduate, by a tutor and Master of Arts, I could not decline.

* Alluding, no doubt, to the students of the German universities where to be notorious for excess of any kind is necessary to their reputation, and goes by the name of "renowning.'

THE

PRO

OF THE

FORK

CHAPTER 12 V

EFFECTS OF OXFORD SOCIETY AND MANNERS ON FOLJAMBE HASTINGS.

Spoke like a tall fellow that respects his reputation.

SHAKSPEARE.-Rich. III.

NOTWITHSTANDING my tutor's kindness, and my sense of his condescension, being such academical grandee in comparison with myself, I felt a sort of sulienness at the tea-table, of which I afterwards was ashamed. I was jealous for myself, and though sufficiently indignant, jealous for Hasfings too. For my own sake, I would not believe that he had slighted me, and for his, I would not believe that he could do so. I recollected, vividly and fondly, all the elegant superiorities of Foljambe Park, particularly those of what I called its young mistress; and I was angry with my kind, though shrewd and observing adviser, for the advice and opinions he had given. I had heard of college pedants, and rusty tutors, and could not help, in my wisdom and my justice, ranking him as one of them. I then, for the first time, observed that his clothes were ill made, and not over well brushed; his band was rumpled, and not well starched; and his figure, though erect from decision of mind, was too ponderous to be elegant.

He knows nothing of Foljambe Park, thought I, and it is because he is insensible to the attractions of the high manners, and ignorant of the beauty and grace, that reign there, that he desires to break this connexion. He never saw Bertha, and wishes to make me a yeoman like himself.

What injustice did I not do this kind and honorable, as well as observing man, in this petulant opinion of him! Yet it was sometime before I gave him the credit he deserved for cool judgment and knowledge of life, acquired by the skilful use he had made of his opportunities. As it was, I was out of humor, and as soon as possible disengaging myself from

the honors of the tea party, I proceeded to moralize very differently, among the gay throng which of an evening peopled the shades of Christ Church walk.

Here I observed excellent specimens of provincial and academical consequence, in all the exhibitions of nature which my tutor had discussed. And very varied were they, accor ding as the pride of scholarship in the men, with its consequeut power and comfortable endowments, or the pride of beauty in the women, with its consciousness still more inflated from its scarcity, predominated.

The heads of houses equalled the pomp of generals on a parade; while their wives and daughters, with the sort of natural instinct inherent in the sex, played (and with equal success) the part of their supposed betters in the higher walks of life.

What particularly struck me, was the immense consequence given by the younger and unmarried females to a number of young men whose costume denoted them of quality, and who buzzed about them with gilded wings, dangerous to their young heads, and perhaps to their young hearts, if the hearts of coquets, which most university beauties are, can ever be said to be in danger.

However this may be, the importance of these young men, or rather perhaps of the associations kindled by the silk and velvet in which they were clothed, was fully demonstrated in the reception everywhere given them by fathers and mothers, and especially by daughters.

These last seemed to "rain influence, and judge the prize" of fashion in this microcosm of human life now beheld for the first time.

But what struck me still more on this occasion, was the poor and uuimportant figure made by Commoners like myself, in comparison with the happier people I have mentioned, happier, if to absorb the notice of the fair dryads of the walk, to the exclusion of us plebeians, was happiness; as I then thought it was. I felt, indeed, so uneasy under it, that I became pensive and melancholy amid the gaity that surrounded me, and was upon the point of returning home to hear what my mentor had to say upon it, when, sailing down the walk at the head of a bevy composed of the deities of the place, I beheld Hastings, in the full glory of university