condescending benefactor! As to his opinion, what could I care for the
opinion of one I had never seen? All that could sensibly affect my--oh,
but I cannot go on with those cutting phrases, which imply but this, 'All
I can care for is the money of a man who insults me while he gives it.'"

VANCE (emphatically).--"Without being a wizard, I should say your
relative was rather a disagreeable person,--not what is called urbane and
amiable,--in fact, a brute."

LIONEL.--"You will not blame me, then, when I tell you that I resolved
not to accept the offer to maintain me at college, with which the letter
closed. Luckily Dr. Wallis (the head master of my school), who had
always been very kind to me, had just undertaken to supervise a popular
translation of the classics. He recommended me, at my request, to the
publisher engaged in the undertaking, as not incapable of translating
some of the less difficult Latin authors,--subject to his corrections.
When I had finished the first instalment of the work thus intrusted to
me, my mother grew alarmed for my health, and insisted on my taking some
recreation. You were about to set out on a pedestrian tour. I had, as
you say, some pounds in my pocket; and thus I have passed with you the
merriest days of my life."

VANCE.--"What said your civil cousin when your refusal to go to college
was conveyed to him?"

LIONEL.--"He did not answer my mother's communication to that effect till
just before I left home, and then,--no, it was not his last letter from
which I repeated that withering extract,--no, the last was more galling
still, for in it he said that if, in spite of the ability and promise
that had been so vaunted, the dulness of a college and the labour of