and send them jogging comfortably off to the university on their lame longs and shorts. No; there would have been some Mr. Grote as school-board commissary, pitching into them questions about history, and some Mr. Lowe, as crownpatronage commissary, pitching into them questions about English literature; and these young men would have been kept from the university, as Diggs's boys are kept from their bird-scaring, till they had instructed themselves. Then, if, after three years of their university, they wanted to be magistrates, another pressure-a great civil-service examination before a board of experts, an examination in English law, Roman law, English history, history of jurisprudence

"A most abominable liberty to take with Lumpington and Hittall!" exclaimed I.

"Then your compulsory education is a most abominable liberty to take with Diggs's boys," retorted Arminius.

"But, good gracious! my dear Arminius," expostulated I, "do you really mean to maintain that a man can't put old Diggs in quod for snaring a hare without all this elaborate apparatus of Roman law and history of jurisprudence?"

'And do you really mean to maintain," returned Arminius, "that a man can't go bird-scaring or sheep-tending without all this elaborate apparatus of a compulsory school?"

"Oh, but," I answered, "to live at all, even at the lowest stage of human life, a man needs instruction."

"Well," returned Arminius, "and to administer at all, even at the lowest stage of public administration, a man needs instruction."

"We have never found it so," said I.

Arminius shrugged his shoulders and was silent. By this time the proceedings in the justice-room were drawn to an end, the majesty of the law had been vindicated against old

Diggs, and the three magistrates were coming out. Lord Lumpington was the first. His lordship good-naturedly recognised me with a nod, and then eyeing Arminius with surprise and curiosity-" Whom on earth have you got there?" he whispered.

"A very distinguished young Prussian savant," replied I. And then dropping my voice, in my most impressive undertones I added, “And a young man of very good family, besides, my lord."

Lord Lumpington looked at Arminius again, smiled, shook his head, and then, turning away, and half-aloud, "Can't compliment you on your friend," says he.

As for that centaur, the Rev. Esau Hittall, who thinks of nothing on earth but field-sports, and in the performance of his sacred duties never warms up except when he lights on some passage about hunting or fowling, he always, whenever he meets me, remembers that in my unregenerate days, before Arminius inoculated me with a passion for intellect, I was rather fond of shooting, and not quite such a successful shot as Hittall himself. So, the moment he catches sight of me" How d'ye do, old fellow?" he blurts out. "Well, been shooting any straighter this year than you used to, eh?"

I turned from him in pity, and then I noticed Arminius, who had unluckily heard Lord Lumpington's unfavourable comment on him, absolutely purple with rage and blowing like a turkey-cock. "Never mind, Arminius," said I soothingly; "run after Lumpington, and ask him the square root of thirty-six."

But now it was my turn to be a little annoyed, for at the same instant Mr. Bottles stepped into his brougham, which was waiting for him, and observing Arminius, his old enemy of the Reigate train, he took no notice whatever of

me who stood there, with my hat in my hand, practising all the airs and graces I have learnt on the Continent. But, with that want of amenity I so often have to deplore in my countrymen, he pulled up the glass on our side with a grunt and a jerk, and drove off like the wind, leaving Arminius in a very bad temper indeed, and me, I confess, a good deal shocked and mortified.—“ Friendship's Garland.”

Thomas Hughes

"Cribs" An Institution of Providence

AFTER breakfast, Tom, East, and Gower met as usual to learn their second lesson together. Tom had been considering how to break his proposal of giving up the crib to the others, and having found no better way (as, indeed, none better can ever be found by man or boy), told them simply what had happened: how he had been to see Arthur, who had talked to him upon the subject, and what he had said, and how for his part he had made up his mind, and wasn't going to use cribs any more. Not being quite sure of his ground, he took the high and pathetic tone, and was proceeding to say, "how that, having his lessons with them for so many years, it would grieve him much to put an end to the arrangement, and that he hoped at any rate if they wouldn't go on with him, they should still be just as good friends, and respect one another's motives-but-”

Here the other boys, who had been listening with open eyes and ears, burst in.

"Stuff and nonsense!" cried Gower. "Here, East, get down the crib and find the place."

"Oh, Tommy, Tommy!" said East, proceeding to do as he was bidden, "that it should ever have come to this! I knew Arthur'd be the ruin of you some day, and you of me. And now the time's come." And he made a doleful face.

"I don't know about ruin," answered Tom. "I know that

you and I would have had the sack long ago, if it hadn't been for him. And you know it as well as I."

"Well, we were in a baddish way before he came, I own; but this new crotchet of his is past a joke."

"Let's give it a trial, Harry; come-you know how often he has been right and we wrong."

"Now, don't you two be jawing away about young Squaretoes," struck in Gower. "He's no end of a sucking wiseacre, I dare say; but we've no time to lose, and I've got the fives'court at half-past nine."

"I say, Gower," said Tom appealingly, "be a good fellow, and let's try if we can't get on without the crib."

"What! in this chorus? Why, we sha'n't get through ten lines."

"I say, Tom," cried East, having hit on a new idea, "don't you remember, when we were in the upper fourth, and old Momus caught me construing off the leaf of a crib which I'd torn out and put in my book, and which would float out on to the floor, he sent me up to be flogged for it?"

"Yes, I remember it very well."

"Well, the doctor, after he'd flogged me, told me himself that he didn't flog me for using a translation, but for taking it into lesson, and using it there when I hadn't learnt a word before I came in. He said there was no harm in using a translation to get a clew to hard passages, if you tried all you could first to make them out without."

"Did he, though?" said Tom. "Then Arthur must be wrong."

"Of course he is," said Gower, "the little prig. We'll only use the crib when we can't construe without it. Go ahead, East."

And on this agreement they started-Tom, satisfied with