ot, as if cracking a snail, and tossing his
chin into the air as if he were going to balance a ladder upon it.
Then, though his features were compressed into a small, monkeyfied
compass, they were themselves, individually, upon a magnificent scale.
It was as if there had been crowded half a dozen gigantic specimens of
human ugliness into my lady's china closet, all of which were elbowing
each other for room. The eyes would have been called large, had it not
been for the vast proportions of the nose, and the nose would have been
thought preposterous, had it not been for the horrible dimensions of the
mouth. Yet the expression of all these anomalies, though very
grotesque, was not unpleasing. You smiled with satisfaction when you
saw how great the improvement was that baboonery had made toward
manhood. You might call him, in a word, a queer, little, ugly-looking
box of yellow mortality, that contained some amiable qualities, and a
great many valuable attainments. Of good sense, or of common sense, he
was never known to show, during the whole period of his life, but one
instance; and that was a most important one--a complete deference, in
all things, to his stately and beautiful wife. Her dominion was
undivided, complete, and unremitting. How she came to marry him was one
of those human riddles that will never be satisfactorily resolved. He
had been a French _emigre_, had had a most superior education, played on
several instruments without taste, understood everything connected with
the classics but their beauty, and was deeply versed in mathematics,
without comprehending their utility.

At this school my progress was rapid. All the care and attention that
the most maternal of hearts could bestow upon me were mine; yet there
was no approach to anything like familiarity on the part of Mrs
Cherfeuil. There lay a large wild common before the house; there was a
noble collection of deep water in the vicinity, in which I perfected my
natatory studies (affected phraseology is the fashion), and my body
strengthened, my mind improved, and I began to taste of real happiness.

It would be amusing work to write a biography of some of the most
remarkable ushers. They seem to be the bats of the social scale.
Gentlemen will not own them, and the classes beneath reject them. They
are generally self-sufficient; the dependency of their situation makes
them mean, and the exercise of delegated power tyrannical. If they have
eith