Wilson, who, as we have said, had a naturally strong sense belonging to him, looked his astonishment at this effusion of what seemed to him to be a palpable, though unaccountable, slander; and eyeing his old associate with some curiosity, asked what had happened that he should so abuse the place of his birth; adding, "I find no such notions here."

"I dare say not," said Robert, with a meaning emphasis, which Wilson did not, or would not, understand; and walking on with still more gloom in his features, he observed, "I almost wish I had followed your example, as my father I should not then have been so un

desired;

happy."

"Are you unhappy?" asked Wilson, with kindness.

"Why yes, and ashamed that I am so; for nothing, I own, is so childish, so unworthy a man of common sense-which, however, I doubt myself to be."

"Come," said Wilson, recovering, by his sympathy for his friend, "I see there is nothing very serious to apprehend; but what's the matter ?"

"Matter to rouse a less irritable disposition than mine," observed Sterling. "Nay, I ques

tion if your Merchant Tailor equanimity, happy as it is, would bear it better."

“But the matter?" still urged Wilson.
"I am a merchant's son," said Sterling.
“Well?”

"A mere city knight !"

"Well?"

"Have been at Hackney Academy !"
"Well?"

"Well! By my faith, but it is not well. I am surrounded by public school-men-peers' sons— one a peer himself-by heirs-apparent of great squires; all men of fashion, and belonging to a class to which you, and I, and other miserables, may seek in vain to be admitted. Nay, I feel myself looked down upon, jeered, laughed at, despised by sons of lawyers and country clergymen, who can hardly pay their battels, merely because my father once lived in St. Swithin's Lane, and I was not educated at a public school."

"More fools they, for giving themselves such airs," said Wilson; "and, if I may say so, you, for taking it so to heart."

"You say true," replied Sterling; "but I cannot account for this usurpation of a superiority I do not own. I know not even if I am

thought to have the same flesh and blood. Yet I am as rich, and I believe as well grounded, as most of these puppies. Would only that I could make them feel it !"

At this he positively stampt upon the ground, and Wilson, shocked as well as surprised, and a total stranger to such feelings, could not even answer, but looked astonishment. At last, thinking he had made a capital discovery to relieve his friend, he fairly asked why he should not leave such a foolish, fastidious college, and come and take refuge with him at St. John's?

Sterling started, and eyed him with almost

horror.

"What! quit the field before I am even engaged. How very little, Wilson, do you know me. If you are satisfied with a Merchant Tailor's garden and obscurity, well. I trust, and dare say, you will be happy; but I look to a higher flight."

"And to be unhappy," answered Wilson, not much pleased. "My proposal, however, was merely to relieve you from the anxieties which you yourself seem to have created, and of which, I thank God, I have no notion."

"Forgive me," cried Sterling; "I have behaved very ill;" and the good-natured Wilson

heartily took the hand held out to him. "I will however stay where I am, and not, I was going to say, eat, or drink, or sleep, till I have proved to those two supercilious honourables that I am quite as good as they."

Wilson professed his ignorance of his meaning. "But if your grievance is, as I suppose," said he," some silly airs they have given themselves, I would not add to their triumph by being silly myself.”

"I will cut them," exclaimed Robert, with fierceness.

"My good friend," returned Wilson, drily, you had better wait till you are acquainted with them. At present they seem to have cut you."

This did not give Mr. Sterling the consolation he had sought, and observing to his friend, "I wish I had your apathy," he took his leave, allowing he had made a great fool of himself; to which, as little offensively as he could, his friend perfectly assented.

It would be more than superfluous to relate all the corrodings of the mind of our friend (now any thing but our hero), which were produced by the mortifications he was forced to undergo; but

such are the misfortunes of false ambition. He tried to analyze his own character, with a view to cure; but in vain. The sore rankled. He was too proud to make advances, even if he thought they would be received: but the contrary was evident, or seemed so to his jealous imagination; and as, in his then frame of mind, the advances of men of his own calibre were poison to him, he shunned them as much as he thought himself shunned by those he wished to conciliate.

He was therefore, though in the midst of a crowd, in a fair way of being left by himself. At dinner he spoke not to his neighbours; at lecture he was insensible to the approbation of Mr. Lambert, because it seemed not to make the least difference in the demeanour of the men of fashion who were his fellows in the class. In short, he was like Haman, whose honours availed him nothing, so long as Mordecai the Jew refused to do him reverence.

Even the public walks were hateful to him, because thronged by people whom he wished to know, but could not; or who wished to know him, and he would not let them.

Hence his perambulations were always solitary. He rambled in the fields, or to Godstow,