had been carefully taught.

I think at this moment I see my mother before me, reclining on her sofa,
and repeating to me some story about Queen Elizabeth and Lord Essex; then
telling me, in a languid voice, as she sank back with the exertion, of
the blessings of a literary taste, and admonishing me never to read above
half an hour at a time for fear of losing my health.

Well, to Eton I went; and the second day I had been there, I was half
killed for refusing, with all the pride of a Pelham, to wash tea-cups. I
was rescued from the clutches of my tyrant by a boy not much bigger than
myself, but reckoned the best fighter, for his size, in the whole school.
His name was Reginald Glanville: from that period, we became inseparable,
and our friendship lasted all the time he stayed at Eton, which was
within a year of my own departure for Cambridge.

His father was a baronet, of a very ancient and wealthy family; and his
mother was a woman of some talent and more ambition. She made her house
one of the most recherchee in London. Seldom seen at large assemblies,
she was eagerly sought after in the well winnowed soirees of the elect.
Her wealth, great as it was, seemed the least prominent ingredient of her
establishment. There was in it no uncalled for ostentation--no purse-
proud vulgarity--no cringing to great, and no patronizing condescension
to little people; even the Sunday newspapers could not find fault with
her, and the querulous wives of younger brothers could only sneer and be
silent.

"It is an excellent connexion," said my mother, when I told her of my
friendship with Reginald Glanville, "and will be of more use to you than
many of greater apparent consequence. Remember, my dear, that in all the