_Ultima Supplicia_; not to mitigate (so at least we understood it),
but to enforce the uttermost stripe. Old Bamber Gascoigne, and Peter
Aubert, I remember, were colleagues on one occasion, when the beadle
turning rather pale, a glass of brandy was ordered to prepare him for
the mysteries. The scourging was, after the old Roman fashion, long
and stately. The lictor accompanied the criminal quite round the hall.
We were generally too faint with attending to the previous disgusting
circumstances, to make accurate report with our eyes of the degree
of corporal suffering inflicted. Report, of course, gave out the
back knotty and livid. After scourging, he was made over, in his
_San Benito_, to his friends, if he had any (but commonly such poor
runagates were friendless), or to his parish officer, who, to enhance
the effect of the scene, had his station allotted to him on the
outside of the hall gate.

These solemn pageantries were not played off so often as to spoil
the general mirth of the community. We had plenty of exercise and
recreation _after_ school hours; and, for myself, I must confess,
that I was never happier, than _in_ them. The Upper and the Lower
Grammar Schools were held in the same room; and an imaginary line only
divided their bounds. Their character was as different as that of the
inhabitants on the two sides of the Pyrennees. The Rev. James Boyer
was the Upper Master; but the Rev. Matthew Field presided over that
portion of the apartment, of which I had the good fortune to be a
member. We lived a life as careless as birds. We talked and did just
what we pleased, and nobody molested us. We carried an accidence, or
a grammar, for form; but, for any trouble it gave us, we might take
two years in getting through the verbs deponent, and another two in
forgetting all that we had learned about them. There was now and then
the formality of saying a lesson, but if you had not learned it, a