Here,

Hitherto, we must remember, our hero has not left his father's roof; he cannot, therefore, as yet claim to be called a schoolboy. We are taught to think of him at this time as a "delightful child." 3 We are told that "there is a grace beyond the reach of affectation in his awkwardness, a malice in his innocence, an intelligence in his nonsense, an insinuating eloquence in his lisp."4 Soon, as we may fancy, he is sent to search for the truth amongst the groves of some long-founded academy. from the very first, his range of study is extensive. He makes himself acquainted-superficially, perhaps-with Linnæus ; he learns by heart the dates and adventures of a long line of barbarian kings; and even in his least thoughtful moods he never omits to practise the inductive method. At a time when ordinary boys are heating their imaginations with badly-written histories, our intelligent child applies himself to the Epitomes of Goldsmith, considering them to afford, not a task, but a pleasure. From these he derives his first knowledge of constitutional history; we subsequently find him quoting from Goldsmith instances in which sovereigns have allied themselves with the people against the aristocracy, and in which the nobles have allied themselves with the people against the sovereign.10

6

9

It

down to us respecting his later home life must be considered to relate. was found necessary to compel him to attend family worship, and to forbid him to read irreligious books.1 He refused once to learn his catechism, and was punished by being sent to bed. without his supper.2 He constantly played truant at church time, and for this fault frequent tasks were set him.3 Upon one occasion, when he ventured to display the precocity of his talents by expressing impious opinions before his brothers and sisters, his father cut short the controversy with a horsewhip. Under troubles such as these

he had recourse for consolation to the society of his favourite authors. Homer and Cervantes 6-in wretched translations-were his constant companions. He knew Don Quixote's lantern jaws and Sancho's broad cheeks as well as the faces of his own playfellows.7 Want of space forbids us to dwell any longer upon the dear classical recollections of his childhood,the old school-room, the dog-eared Virgil, the holiday, the first prize, the tears so often shed and so quickly dried.s We must hasten forward to the time when the Schoolboy, as may be believed, adopted for his motto that celebrated saying of Lord Bacon, “I have taken all knowledge to be my province."

He now began to take especial delight in the study of history; and here his enormous powers of memory served him in good stead. He never forgot a detail, however apparently unimportant. He could tell, for example, at a moment's notice, who it was that imprisoned Montezuma," who strangled Atahualpa,10 or how Montrose was executed.11 His allusions in conversation to facts of ancient history were so pregnant with sense and learning that,

compared with them, the quotations and classical stories of the great Pitt appear trite indeed. But ancient history, as the Schoolboy well knew, could furnish him with something more than mere classical allusions: 2 he studied the records of antiquity, to gain from them lessons which should guide him in his future career. He fully appreciated his own talents, and he felt that in public life alone could he find full scope for them. The affectation of ignorance, which might have been pardoned in a boy of his years,3 could never be laid to his charge; he was also free from any artificial excess of modesty. He resolved, therefore, to be a statesman. To practise himself in English composition and in oratory, he devoted much of his time to writing essays and speaking at a school debating club. Amongst other works he produced a theme on the death of Leonidas, a paper upon the thesis-Odisse quem læseris, and also a description of the Plague of 1527, concerning which description we can hardly believe that it was worthless, since the Schoolboy himself thought it "much finer than the incomparable introduction of the De

cameron.

7

4

n." Of his prowess as a debater we are enabled to speak very highly. We read that he was the equal of Isocrates in rhetoric, and of Dr. Johnson in argument. We are told, again, that the proceedings of the debating club which the Schoolboy attended, contrasted not unfavourably with the discussion in the Convention held at Paris on the 21st of December, 1792.9

Little, as we imagine, need be said of our hero's knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages. It is true that his Latin verses were as good as those of Addison; 10 but we must remember that to be a verse-writer is no rare accom

plishment. Many clever boys, whose knowledge of the language and literature of Greece and Rome is very superficial, sometimes have the knack of versification.1 It is true, again-to compare the Schoolboy once more with the great lexicographer-that he was as deeply read as Dr. Johnson in the works of Greek authors, and that he understood them very nearly as well; 2 but it should not be forgotten that a knowledge of Greek, which would have been thought respectable at Oxford in the reign of Queen Anne, is evidently less than that which many lads may be expected to carry away every year from Eton and Rugby.3 We need not stay to compare the scholarship of our hero with that of the late Mr. Croker ; nor will we dwell upon the fact that the former would have been right, and that the latter was wrong, as to the possible meanings of "puella" 5-the estimation in which Lucina's beauty should rightly be held or the true interpretation of the phrase θνητοί φίλοι. We could tell, if we would, how the illustrious Pitt was guilty of false quantities at which the Schoolboy would have shuddered; and how Atterbury and his confederacy committed, during their controversy with Bentley upon the spurious letters of Phalaris, disgraceful blunders for which the Schoolboy would have been whipped. But we conceive that we should scarcely add to our hero's fame by comparing his critical acumen with that of those Christ Church scholars who allowed themselves to be imposed upon by classical imitations so feebly and rudely executed. 10 Besides,

to borrow Lord Macaulay's words, "we are ashamed to detain our readers with this fourth-form learning." 11

If multiplied acquirements and versatility of genius can ensure success in life, then of a truth was that prospect

a fair one which opened before the Schoolboy as he entered his fifteenth year. He had mastered philosophy at an age when most scholars are only beginning to study it. He had thought enough on the Divine Attributes, the Origin of Evil, the Necessity of Human Actions, and the Foundation of Moral Obligation, to be fully entitled to the praise which Voltaire gives to Zadig;1 he could laugh at the jargon which had imposed on Bacon. 2 He had acquired He had acquired by practice a singular facility in transmitting his thoughts to others, whether by writing or speech. His style was elegant, and probably free from those "fine things which boys of fifteen admire;" his remarks made in general conversation do not appear to have ever fallen below the intellectual level of a Boswell. 4

Of the Schoolboy's politics we have not much to say. He was probably a Liberal; but he was assuredly never a bigot. He was intimately acquainted with the fundamental maxims of our polity; and he could criticise the policy which the Liberals of the 17th century adopted towards the native Irish, no less than the attitude which the Conservatives of his own day assumed with reference to Reform.

Our authorities up to this point have kept us fully informed as to the important events in the Schoolboy's intellectual life; but, after he has passed his fifteenth year, for some mysterious reason, we hear of him no more.

1 Essays, vol. ii. p. 129.

2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 319.

3 Miscellaneous Writings, p. 184.

Essays, vol. i. p. 176.

Ibid. vol. i. p. 64.

This

Ibid. vol. ii. p. 2.

appears to us the most extraordinary fact in his very extraordinary life. Is it possible that he quarrelled with Lord Macaulay, who thereupon determined to chronicle his successes no longer? Can it be that the great promise of the boy failed to be fulfilled in the man? Or are we to solve our difficulty by boldly asserting that the Schoolboy emigrated to New Zealand in his sixteenth year, and that he will be heard of no more until some Maori descendant of his shall represent him on the banks of the Thames? We confess that we are little pleased with any of the hitherto suggested explanations of the problem. We have given much attention to the point; and, after careful weighing of probabilities, have arrived at a conclusion which we reluctantly pronounce to be the true one. Our opinion is that Lord Macaulay ceased to speak of the Schoolboy after the age of fifteen because it was at that age that the Schoolboy died. The intense application, the unceasing brain-work, which had been the pleasure of his life, proved the cause of his death: he himself had winged the shaft which struck him down. It was indeed a sad fate to have laboured, and to have shown no public fruit of that labour; to have died prematurely, while as yet unborn into the literary world.

We feel that any remarks of ours upon the story which we have attempted to tell would be as a farce after a tragedy; but we cannot help briefly expressing our satisfaction that it should have been permitted to us to collect into a narrative, however unworthily, the achievements of a hero in whose case justice had been so long delayed as to have appeared likely to be eternally denied.

V.

La mère

Two days passed: Fifine went about her work, flushed, and with red swollen eyelids; but when she came into the sitting-room to her mother she contrived to look bright and cheerful. Jacqueline watched the girl silently. Monsieur Dusecq's name had not been spoken between them since his visit, for Fifine contrived to avoid being alone with her mother, and feigned to fall asleep as soon as she was in bed. But La mère Jacqueline slept lightly, and as she lay awake thinking of this marriage. of Fifine's, it seemed to her that the child was restless and moaned in her sleep.

The third day was a jour de fête it was long since the crippled woman had been to hear mass, and Madame proposed that Fifine should get a chair and go with her mother to the Grande Messe at eleven o'clock.

In her heart Madame Popot thought this would be a good opportunity of meeting Monsieur Dusecq; it seemed to the good woman that the courtship made slow progress.

"Ma foi," she said to herself, as she went to the Cathedral,-Madame was much too good a Catholic to wash on a festival of the Church,-"love-making is altered since my time. One would have thought a man would like to look at the woman he means to marry."

She wronged Monsieur Dusecq. He had been charmed with his pretty, blushing fiancée; but, alas! a public dinner was to be held at the Hôtel de Grue, and ever since Sunday the chef's brain had been actively at work in the preparation and contriving of certain new dishes to grace the feast.

The nave of the Cathedral was already full, but Madame Popot elbowed her way till she found a vacant chair within

view of the high altar. Fifine and her mother had gone in by a small door opening into one of the transepts; there was more space here, and they got two chairs in front of the side altar.

Fifine was sorry when the service came to an end. She had never found so much happiness in church as she had lately found there, though her mother had trained her to be devout. She had been too much absorbed to look round her; but La mère Jacqueline, sitting at little behind-sitting, too, when others knelt had been observant of troubled glances cast on her daughter by a tall, dark-eyed man in the garb of a fisherman. The mass was over, and they came out into the porch; while Fifine was slowly helping her mother into the chair again, the stranger pushed out of the crowd, and offered his services. La mère Jacqueline looked quickly at her daughter, but Fifine hung down her head.

The bearers trotted on with the chair, a queer, clumsy contrivance, and Michel followed side by side with Fifine.

"Does your mother know who I am?" he asked.

"I have not told her anything, and no more has been said about the marriage." "Bon!"-Michel looked smiling"Allons, my child! I have a sure hope all will go well. I want to speak to thee of our future. Thou hast shown a true woman's faith in loving me, my Fifine; for what dost thou know of me except that I catch fish in the river? Allons!"-the colour rose in his face-"I may as well confess at once that I am an idle fellow, a good-fornothing.

Fifine looked at him with wide wondering eyes, and Michel smiled.

"Not as thou thinkest, little one. I worked hard enough once. I was a sailor; but in a storm I got entangled

when the mast fell, and this arm"-he touched his left sleeve-"is almost useless in respect of strength. I came home to Louvain, and was nursed by some good Sœurs there-I have no mother or sisters, Fifine. It was a long, tedious illness, for my shoulder was also injured, and it seemed to make an idle fellow of me. I have been well for a year, and yet I have never troubled to work except just to earn the few sous I need by catching fish in the river. Now, Fifine, what do you think of me? Will you give me up for Monsieur Dusecq?"

They walked along discreetly side by side behind the chair, but Fifine gave her lover a look which satisfied him.

"I can't make it out," he said. "I used to be hard-working, but then I had my mother to help. If I had a wife, Fifine, I feel I should work again; but I must first make a home for her. Is it not so?"

Fifine's eyes were full of love and trust as she looked up at her lover. The heavy cloud that had made all her future look so grey and dim lifted. A warm flood of sunshine came pouring into her heart, it sparkled through her pulses. The strong hopefulness of his words and his voice buoyed her up in her implicit faith; and, like the child beside the river who fancies that because the water floats the weeds that star its surface, it will float him too, so it seemed to Fifine that Michel's confidence must influence her aunt and her mother also. Poor little trusting Fifine! she had yet to learn how much love has to do with trust.

When they reached the bridge, Fifine paused. "Good-bye now," she said; "it is best to part here."

cult to keep up hopefulness in which there is an amount of unreality when surrounded by the associations of daily life. There were the heaps of coal and the vermilion tiles-there was the old crane, and the brown-sailed barge that had come up the canal yesterday. And when Aunt Popot came out under the archway, and asked them if they had seen Monsieur Dusecq at the Cathedral, a pall seemed to be flung over Fifine's hope of deliverance, and she shuddered at the living grave which her life seemed destined to fill.

La mère Jacqueline was seldom talkative, but to-day she was more silent than ever. Madame Popot rolled in and out during the afternoon, now setting a chair in its place, now pulling some yellow leaves off the fuchsias and geraniums in the window. She was expecting a visitor.

The table d'hôte at La Grue was at five o'clock, and when the chimes went three-quarters past four, Madame Popot gave up expecting; she went upstairs and came down again in cloak and hood, her spotless white cap-strings drawn into the largest of starched bows, and announced her intention of paying a visit to the sick child of La grosse Margotin.

La mère Jacqueline drew a deep breath. Margotin lived as far as the Porte des Capucins, and Sister Popot's walking powers were of the slowest. The poor crippled woman rejoiced; she was longing for a talk with her darling.

VI.

LA MÈRE JACQUELINE sat crouched up in her usual corner, but not in the patient, uncomplaining attitude that had grown so habitual. She was rocking herself backwards and forwards, wringing the feeble hands that lay on her lap.

"Oh, my child! my child!" the poor woman murmured; "and to think that I have asked of thee so hard a sacrifice!"

For, in the artless confession that she had drawn from Fifine, the mother had seen plainly the motive of her child's