fty pupils--sometimes it amounted to nearly three hundred. At the
time of which I am about to speak, it was very full, containing, among
others, many young men. The times are no more when persons of nineteen
and twenty suffered themselves to be horsed, and took their one and two
dozen with edification and humility. At this age we now cultivate
moustaches, talk of our Joe Mantons, send a friend to demand an
explanation, and all that sort of thing. Oh! times are much improved!
However, at that period, the birch was no visionary terror. Infliction
or expulsion was the alternative! and as the form of government was a
despotism--like all despotisms--it was subject, at intervals, to great
convulsions. I am going to describe the greatest under the reign of
Root the First.

Mr Root was capricious. Sometimes he wore his own handsome head well
powdered; at others, curled without powder; at others, straight, without
powder or curls. He was churchwarden; and then, when his head was full
of his office, it was also full of flour, and full of ideas of his own
consequence and infallibility. On a concert night, and in the
ball-room, it was curled, and then it was full of amatory conquests;
and, as he was captain in the Cavalry Volunteers, on field days his hair
was straight and lank--martial ardour gave him no time to attend to the
fripperies of the coxcomb. These are but small particulars, but such
are very important in the character of a great man. With his hair
curled, he was jocular, even playful; with it lank, he was a great
disciplinarian--had military subordination strong in respect--and the
birch gyrated freely; but when he was full blown in powder, he was
unbearable,--there was then combined all the severity of the soldier and
the dogmatism of the pedagogue, with the self-sufficiency and
domineering nature of the coxcomb and churchwarden.

On the memorable fifth of November, Mr Root appeared in the
school-room, with his hair elaborately powdered.

The little boys trembled. Lads by fifteens and twenties wanted to go
out under various pretences. The big boys looked very serious and very
resolved. It was twelve o'clock, and some thirty or forty--myself
always included--were duly flogged, it being "his custom at the hour of
noon." When the periodical operation was over, at which there was much
spargefication of powder from his whitened head, he commanded silence.
Even the flagellated boys contrived to hush up their