she stretched forth her hand with the keys to her

astonished master.

"What, in God's name, Girzy, mak's ye speak such havers as ye've been bletherin' for the last five minutes, and what for do ye keep raxin' the keys, as if I wanted them frae ye? Gi'e us nae mair o' your clishmaclavers, but gang ben the house, and gin ye dinna think better o't in the morning, I'se warrant you'll find few objections on my part to your seeking for another place."

Perceiving, now, that the contest was likely to terminate without any important results, and observing both parties to manifest an inclination for peace, on the footing of the status ante bellum, I took an early opportunity of withdrawing from the field, and returned to my quarters in the College.

CHAPTER XIV.

Farewell! a word that hath been, and must be.

BYRON.

Now lords and earls, and all their sweeping train,
And garters, stars, and coronets appear.

POPE.

IN youth, with all its gaiety and excitement, "time passes o'er us with a noiseless lapse;" and his course is swift and trackless as that of a bird. Spring was now gone, and it was summer. halls of the College were once more deserted, and I, too, made preparation for departure.

The

The first of May is the day fixed by immemorial usage in the University, for the distribution of the prizes: a day looked forward to with

66

hopes, and fears that kindle hope," by many youthful and ardent spirits. The great hall of the

College on that day certainly presents a very pleasing and animated spectacle. The academical distinctions are bestowed with much of ceremonial pomp, in presence of a vast concourse of spectators and it is not uninteresting to mark the flush of bashful triumph on the cheek of the victor,-the sparkling of his downcast eye, as the hall is rent with loud applause, when he advances to receive the badge of honour assigned him by the voice of his fellow-students. It is altogether a sight to stir the spirit in the youthful bosom, and stimulate into healthy action faculties which, but for such excitement, might have continued in unbroken slumber.

Of such distinctions, irregular as my habits of study had been, I was a partaker. In some of my classes I stood first,-in all I carried off some mark of successful application; and, in now looking back on the year which I spent in the College of Glasgow, I cannot but refer to it, the acquisition of that love of literature, which has never died within me, and in which I have found a relief and a resource, under circumstances when its place could scarcely have been otherwise supplied.

Of my family I have of late said little, yet they

were but seldom absent from my thoughts, and with the different members of it I kept up a constant intercourse by letter. My father seldom wrote to me, and when he did, his letters betrayed little of that affectionate feeling which might be expected to breathe in the confidential intercourse of a parent and an only son. Though neither harsh nor unkind, they were cold and stately, and in character rather those of a monitor rigid in the performance of a duty, than of a father whose hopes were garnered up in the object he addressed.

} From my mother I heard more frequently, but writing was an exertion to which she was frequently unequal, and my principal correspondent was Jane. In the letters of that dear sister, nothing that interested me, was too insignificant to find a place. She gathered information from the grooms and keeper of my stud and kennel, which she faithfully embodied (bating a few technical mistakes) in her epistles. She told me of Hecuba, my favourite old mare, and enlarged on the colour and beauty of her foal, which little Lucy fed daily in the paddock. She spoke, too, of Don and Ponto, -of Ariel, my little spaniel, petted and caressed by all, for the sake of her absent master.

The accounts which I received from Jane of

my

mother's health, though unfavourable, did not excite alarm. Nor did either Jane or my father appear to feel such. She had, I was told, become more feeble; but a trip to Brighton was meditated, and the sea-breezes would restore her strength. She suffered from a severe cough; but this the warmth of the approaching summer would remove. Her spirits, too, were good, and her letters betrayed no symptom of the languor of disease. It is not the character of youth to anticipate evil. Death is then regarded as a distant, though inevitable event, to whose dreaded approach we shut our eyes and stop our ears, till his chariot-wheels are at hand, and he already thunders at the gate.

In this situation did matters stand, when, at the conclusion of the College session, I wrote to my father to learn his wishes as to my motions. My friend Conyers was about to visit one of his guardians in Yorkshire, an old fox-hunting squire, where he was to remain till a cornetcy of dragoons had been obtained for him. We proposed a tour by the Lakes, and he pressed me to accompany him.

: I mentioned this scheme to my father, and re