will no doubt go down to posterity in the Album of his sister Mary.

For the first fourteen years of his life, the education of Mr.
Verdant Green was conducted wholly under the shadow of his paternal
roof, upon principles fondly imagined to be the soundest and purest
for the formation of his character. Mrs. Green, who was as good and
motherly a soul as ever lived,


[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 11]

was yet (as we have shown) one of the Sappeys of Sapcot, a family
that were not renowned either for common sense or worldly wisdom, and
her notions of a boy's education were of that kind laid down by her
favourite poet, Cowper, in his "Tirocinium" that we are

"Well-tutor'd ~only~ while we share
A mother's lectures and a nurse's care;"

and in her horror of all other kind of instruction (not that she
admitted Mrs. Toosypegs to her counsels), she fondly kept Master
Verdant at her own apron-strings. The task of teaching his young
idea how to shoot was committed chiefly to his sisters' governess,
and he regularly took his place with them in the school-room. These
daily exercises and mental drillings were subject to the inspection
of their maiden-aunt, Miss Virginia Verdant, a first cousin of Mr.
Green's, who had come to visit at the Manor during Master Verdant's
infancy, and had remained there ever since; and this generalship was
crowned with such success, that her nephew grew up the girlish