as quickly as it is revealed by men, now combined to strengthen still more and to exasperate my early prepossession. Astonished by the attention with which I had this day listened to all that seemed so unlikely to interest a boy of my age, my father, with a smile and a wink, and a side nod of his head, not meant, I suppose, for me to see, but which I noticed the more, pointed me out to the company, by whom it was unanimously agreed, that my attention was a proof of uncommon abilities, and an early decided taste for public business. Young lord Mowbray, a boy two years older than myself, a gawkee schoolboy, was present; and had, during this long hour after dinner, manifested sundry symptoms of impatience, and made many vain efforts to get me out of the room. After cracking his nuts and his nut-shells, and thrice cracking the cracked-after suppressing the thick-coming yawns that at last could no longer be suppressed, he had risen, writhed, stretched, and had fairly taken himself out of the room. And now he just peeped in, to see if he could tempt me forth to play.

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No, no," cried my father, you'll not get Harrington, he is too deep here in politics-but, however, Harrington, my dear boy, 'tis not the thing for your young companion-go off and play with Mowbray but stay, first, since you've been one of us so long, what have we been talking of?"

"The Jews, to be sure, papa."

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Right," cried my father; "and what about them, my dear?"

"Whether they ought to be let to live in England, or any where."

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Right again, that is right in the main," cried my father, "though that is a larger view of the subject than we took."

"And what reasons did you hear?" said a gentleman in company.

call

upon

"Reasons!" interrupted my father: “Oh! sir, to the boy for all the reasons he has heardBut you'll not pose him: speak out, speak up, Harrington, my boy!"

"I've nothing to say about reasons, sir."

"No! that was not a fair question," said my father; "but, my boy, you know on which side you are, don't you?"

"To be sure-on your side, father.”

“That's right—bravo! To know on which side one is, is one great point in life."

"And I can tell on which side every one here is.” Then going round the table, I touched the shoulder of each of the company, saying, " A Jew!-No Jew!" and bursts of applause ensued.

When I came to my father again, he caught me in his arms, kissed me, patted my head, clapped me on the back, poured out a bumper of wine, bid me drink his toast, "No Naturalization Bill!-No Jews!" and while I blundered out the toast, and tossed off the bumper, my father pronounced me a clever fellow, a spirited little devil, who, if I did but live to be a man, would be, he'd engage, an honour to my country, my family, and my party."

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Exalted, not to say intoxicated, by my father's praise, when I went to the drawing-room to the ladies, I became rather more eloquent and noisy than my mother thought quite becoming; she could not, indeed, forbear smiling furtively at my wit, when, in answer to some simple country lady's question of, "After all, why should not the Jews be naturalized ?” I, with all the pertness of ignorance, replied, "Why, ma'am, because the Jews are naturally an unnatural

pack of people, and you can't naturalize what's naturally unnatural.”

Kisses and cake in abundance followed-but when the company was gone, my mamma thought it her duty to say a few words to me upon politeness, and a few words to my father upon the too much wine he had given me. The reproach to my father, being just, he could not endure; but instead of admitting the truth, he vowed, by Jupiter Ammon, that his boy should never be made a miss Molly, and to school I should go, by Jupiter Ammon, next morning, plump.

Now it was well known in our house, that a sentence of my father beginning and ending "by Jupiter Ammon" admitted of no reply from any mortal-it was the stamp of fate; no hope of any reversion of the decree: it seemed to bind even him who uttered the oath beyond his own power of revocation. My mother was convinced that even her intercession was vain, so she withdrew, weeping, to the female apartments; where, surrounded by her maids, the decree of fate was reported, but not verbatim, after the manner of the gods and goddesses. The maids and the washerwoman, however, scolded one another very much after their manner, in a council held at midnight, about my clothes; the result of the whole was that "they must be found and packed;" and found and packed at last they were; and the next morning, as decreed, early as Aurora streaked the east, to school I went, very little thinking of her rosy-tipped fingers.

CHAPTER III.

My life at school was like that of any other schoolboy. I shall not record, even if I could remember, how often I was flogged when I did not deserve it, or how often I escaped when I did. Five years of my life passed away, of which I have nothing to relate but that I learned to whip a top, and to play at ball and marbles, each in their season; that I acquired in due course the usual quantity of Greek and Latin; and perpetrated in my time, I presume, the usual quantity of mischief. But in the fourth year of my schoolboy life an opportunity for unusual mischief occurred. An accident happened, which, however trifling in itself, can never be effaced from my memory. Every particular connected with it is indeed as fresh in my recollection as it was the day after it happened. It was a circumstance which awakened long dormant associations, and combined them with all the feelings and principles of party spirit, which had first been inculcated by my father at home, and which had been exercised so well and so continually by my companions at school, as to have become the governing power of my mind.

Schoolboys as well as men can find or make a party question, and quarrel out of any thing or out of nothing. There was a Scotch pedler, who used to come every Thursday evening to our school to supply our various wants and fancies. The Scotch pedler died, and two candidates offered to supply his place, an English lad of the name of Dutton, and a Jew boy of the name of Jacob. Dutton was son to a man who had lived as butler in Mowbray's family. Lord

Mowbray knew the boy to be a rogue, but thought he was attached to the Mowbrays, and at all events was determined to support him, as being somehow supposed to be connected with his family. Reminding me of my early declaration at my father's table against the naturalization of the Jews, and the bon-mot I had made, and the toast I had drank, and the pledge I had given, Mowbray easily engaged me to join him against the Jew boy; and a zealous partisan against Jacob I became, canvassing as if my life had depended upon this point. But in spite of all our zeal, noise, violence, and cabal, it was the least and the most simple child in the school who decided the election.. This youngster had in secret offered to exchange a silver pencil-case for a top, or something of such inadequate value: Jacob, instead of taking advantage of the child, explained to him that his pencil-case was worth twenty tops. On the day of election, this little boy, mounted upon the top of a step-ladder, appeared over the heads of the crowd, and in a small clear voice, and with an eagerness which fixed attention, related the history of his pencil-case, and ended by hoping with all his heart that his friend Jacob, his honest Jacob, might be chosen. Jacob was elected. Mowbray and I, and all our party, vexed and mortified, became the more inveterate in our aversion to the successful candidate; and from this moment we determined to plague and persecute him, till we should force him to give up. Every Thursday evening, the moment he appeared in the school-room, or on the play-ground, our party commenced the attack upon "the Wandering Jew," as we called this poor pedler; and with every opprobrious nickname, and every practical jest, that mischievous and incensed schoolboy zealots could devise, we persecuted and