mand by the parliament as a Presbyterian, received as the reward of his services the Castle of Winchester with its appurtenances, upon which he had some claims on the score of family alliance. This of course rendered him a great man among us and it is well known that the brilliancy of his services in one period of the war, gained him with his party the familiar appellation of William the Conqueror. Nicknames at all times furnish a favourite sport to school-boys; and as young Waller was indisputably, as far as the rank and station of his father was concerned, the most eminent of the Presbyterian boys of Winchester College, his fellow-pupils, by general consent, fastened upon him in raillery and contempt the appellation which his father had earned by his exploits. It somehow happened that I contracted a particular familiarity with this boy. I can scarcely now account for the selection I made. My native taste, as I have already said, would have led me

to Clifford. But such are the caprices of human intercourse!

Clifford was beautiful and prepossessing. Nothing could exceed the sweetness of his disposition, or the warmth of his heart. Yet I shrunk from Clifford, and attached myself to Waller. The solution of this, lies in what I have already delineated of my character. I was by nature solitary. There fore Waller suited me, and Clifford did not. Waller was a lad of diminutive stature, and his complexion was a deadly pale. His eye sometimes glistened; but not with kindness. He knew not what it was to love any creature but himself; the occasional, rarely occurring, lighting up of his looks, was from conceit, the triumph, when such triumph fell to his share, of an abor tive specimen of manhood over his happier fellows. To finish his portrait, he was in some degree, though not violently, deformed in his person. Such was the William the Conqueror of Winchester College!

It was disdain, and the unsociableness of my nature, that dictated this choice. I could not unbosom my thoughts; I could not come into contact with another being of the same species as myself. Once I had done so, and yet but imperfectly, with a creature of another sex, my sister. But in the groupes and the busy scenes of Winchester school I felt that this was impossible. Clifford, as I have said, was the subject of my first and my sincerest admiration; but I could not court him. All beings were to me tools that I was to make use of, or foes whose destiny it seemed to be to thwart my purposes, or to subvert my tranquillity. Yes; I could court, and accommodate myself to the foibles of another, but not as to an equal. At the time that I descended to him, I must feel that it was the sport of my humour, not a necessity to which my inferiority impelled me. In a word, pride, a self-centred and untameable pride, was the inseparable concomitant of all my aɛtions.

It was this feature of my nature, that drove me to reject Clifford, and any other of the talented and high-minded pupils of Winchester College, and to chuse Waller. I chose him, because my sullen nature would not admit of a friend. I could have him by my side, when I did not prefer to be alone, and could say to him just what I pleased, and no more. There was no danger in him of any sally of the mind, any spark of an electrical nature being struck out, that should set the whole man in a blaze. My sobriety, and the solitude of my soul were perfect. I had a figure pacing step by step along with me, with which I could amuse myself as I pleased, without losing the advantage, as to every material point, of being totally alone. I chose this lad, because I could manage him as I pleased. There was nothing commanding or masculine in his turn of mind. I was not afraid that he should run out of the course, and make me the un

willing associate of any freak of his own. suggestion. He was of a timid and pusillanimous nature, and by no means likely to abound in his own sense, or to prove stubborn and uncontrolable to the mandates of one whose superiority he felt. Such at least was my interpretation of his charac

ter.

But, to return to the incident I was about to relate. A book of prints was found in my apartment, of the most odious nature, and least of all to be forgiven within the walls of Winchester School. It must have been the collection of some person, a deadly foe to monarchy (or, as it was then called) the government of a single person, and to the House of Stuart. The first print represented Henry, Prince of Wales, and his brother Charles, yet an urchin; Prince Henry being in the act of flouting and upbraiding the other, pointing at his crooked legs, with a label from his mouth, "Never mind; that is a good child! We will make