r; she owes her fortune to me." Both of them
thus, in future days, claimed the education of the famous Ravenswing;
and even Sir George Thrum, though he wished to ecraser the Ligonier,
pretended that her present success was his work because once she had
been brought by her mother, Mrs. Larkins, to sing for Sir George's
approval.

When the two professors met it was with the most delighted cordiality
on the part of both. "Mein lieber Herr," Thrum would say (with some
malice), "your sonata in x flat is divine." "Chevalier," Baroski would
reply, "dat andante movement in w is worthy of Beethoven. I gif you
my sacred honour," and so forth. In fact, they loved each other as
gentlemen in their profession always do.

The two famous professors conduct their academies on very opposite
principles. Baroski writes ballet music; Thrum, on the contrary, says
"he cannot but deplore the dangerous fascinations of the dance," and
writes more for Exeter Hall and Birmingham. While Baroski drives a cab
in the Park with a very suspicious Mademoiselle Leocadie, or Amenaide,
by his side, you may see Thrum walking to evening church with his lady,
and hymns are sung there of his own composition. He belongs to the
"Athenaeum Club," he goes to the Levee once a year, he does
everything that a respectable man should; and if, by the means of this
respectability, he manages to make his little trade far more profitable
than it otherwise would be, are we to quarrel with him for it?

Sir George, in fact, had every reason to be respectable. He had been a
choir-boy at Windsor, had played to the old King's violoncello, had
been intimate with him, and had received knighthood at the hand of his
revered sovereign. He had a snuff-box which His Majesty gave him, and
portraits of him and the young princes all over the house. He had also
a foreign order (no other, indeed, than the Elephant and Castle of
Kalbsbraten-Pumpernickel), conferred upon him by the Grand Duke when
here with the allied sovereigns in 1814. With this ribbon round his
neck, on gala days, and in a white waistcoat, the old gentleman looked
splendid as he moved along in a blue coat with the Windsor button, and
neat black small-clothes, and silk stockings. He lived in an old tall
dingy house, furnished in the reign of George III., his beloved master,
and not much more cheerful now than a family vault. They are awfully
funereal, those ornaments of the close of the last century--tall gloomy
horse-hai