PARIS AFTER WATERLOO. 33 paper-readers. I hope, however, to be released to-morrow, and to see Talma and Mlle. Mars in the Partie de Chasse de Henri IV.,' as I deny myself Mlle. Goselin's dancing in 'Psyche' tonight, and the 'Pia Valeuse,' which last has now run 85 nights, drawing francs and tears innumerable. The theatres seem not to have been painted since the Peace of Amiens-all are dingy, but the acting admirable. The cuisine is certainly en décadence. So at least say the judges. The Gallery is now, alas! full only of pedestals and picture-frames-the swallows are literally on the wing there-and it looks like an auction-room after a sale. A scene of still greater confusion is the Austrian Barrack, where the Venus, the Apollo, the Transfiguration, and a thousand precious things, are huddled together. They say the French show no feeling, but the melancholy groups assembled in the Place de Carrousel to gaze at the Venetian horses for some days before they were taken down by our engineers, and those now assembled round the Column with the same sad presentiment, would affect even F. a little. They won't rob us of everything,' said an old gentleman to me in the crowd; they would take away the city of Paris if they could!' There is a caricature of the Duke of Wellington in circulation with great moustaches, inscribed M. Blucher, and I fear we are growing very unpopular. My reading, alas! is confined to plays and farces, which I read before I go to the theatre, because they talk so damned fast there, as Dangle says in the Critic,' that I can't understand a word they say. I was very agreeably C surprised to find in the Rue de Grenelle a very delightful English family the other day, and theirs is the only house I have been in-Mrs Ann Scott and her son and daughter-and who do you think I introduced there but Glasserton Stewart under a magnificent pair of whiskers. He came with a King's messenger from Turin to see the Gallery, but it has vanished like the Palace of Aladdin, and he came only to empty walls. He returns next week to Florence. He was at Genoa when Lady Jane Montague died, and at Naples he saw the last of poor Eustace, events that have thrown a shade over our Italian town. As I came out of Rochester, who should be driving into it but poor Lady Shaftesbury; but we were both driving so fast that I had only a glimpse of her, though I made what noise I could. . I dined with Lady Barbara just before her confinement. I have said so much about nothing, I have no room for real things. I am not sure I should like to see the parting between you and Charles 1-strange it is, as you observe, that a mother's nerves should be strung to quiver for people so passionately fond of enterprise and danger, and that all her business should be to prepare them for leaving her. Ever and ever yours, S. R." His next letter comes the following year, deploring business which prevented him coming to Glen Finart :— "I have a line from Lord Byron he is on the 1 Who was just going to school. LETTERS OF S. ROGERS. 35 Lake of Geneva, and, like another St Preux, was nearly cast away the other evening under the rocks of Maillarie. He has read Glenarvon' and finished another canto of Childe Harold,' and a smaller poem or two, and sets off for Italy immediately. Madame de Staël has also written three vols. for you. The two first are on France, the last on England." 36 CHAPTER II. 1815-1822. SCHOOL-TIME AND HOLIDAYS. THE journey to Eton from Dunmore was a formidable affair for young Charles, who never, to the end of his life, succeeded in going to sleep in a carriage. The fastest travelling from Dunmore to London occupied three days and two nights, and, on account of his inveterate sleeplessness in a coach, the boy was generally sent by the Leith smack to the Thames. In Edinburgh he was taken in charge by his father's estate agent, Mr Tait, and formed a close friendship with his two sons, of whom the second afterwards became Archbishop of Canterbury. Eton boys of to-day perhaps do not realise the ease of transit they enjoy-eight hours from London to Edinburgh in a saloon furnished like a boudoir-though they may regard somewhat en viously the large inroads which the old-fashioned travelling sometimes made on the school - time. On one occasion the smack in which Charles, bound for school, embarked at Leith, was blown over to the coast of Norway, and it was a fortnight before she landed him again, not in London, but in Leith! Notwithstanding such impediments as this to consecutive study, Charles Murray acquired a pretty turn for Latin verses, the making of which was really nearly all a boy could learn at Eton in Keate's day. Sometimes the exercises were varied by practice in English verse; and once a-week an afternoon was devoted to what was called an extempore, though the subject was set at 2 P.M. and the lines (which were not to exceed four) had not to be shown up till two hours later. On one occasion the subject set was Horace's Insanire omnes. On this a very shy, quiet boy, whom nobody suspected of capacity for a joke, sent in the following stanza : "Old Horace says 'All men are mad,' Who sends his son to Eton school." Charles's elder brother, Lord Fincastle, was also |