upted song went on as before. I was astonished, and
somewhat dismayed, by this specimen of barrack-life; but, getting
quietly inside the building, I succeeded in cooking for my uncle and
myself some porridge over one of the unoccupied fires, and then stole
off, as early as I could, to my lair in a solitary hay-loft--for there
was no room for us in the barrack--where, by the judicious use of a
little sulphur and mercury, I succeeded in freeing my master from the
effects of the strange bed-fellowship which our recent misery had made,
and preserving myself from infection. The following Sabbath was a day
of quiet rest; and I commenced the labours of the week, disposed to
think that my lot, though rather a rough one, was not altogether
unendurable; and that, even were it worse than it was, it would be at
once wise and manly, seeing that winter would certainly come, cheerfully
to acquiesce in and bear up under it.

I had, in truth, entered a school altogether new--at times, as I have
just shown, a singularly noisy and uproarious one, for it was a school
without master or monitor; but its occasional lessons were,
notwithstanding, eminently worthy of being scanned. All know that there
exists such a thing as professional character. On some men, indeed,
nature imprints so strongly the stamp of individuality, that the feebler
stamp of circumstance and position fails to impress them. Such cases,
however, must always be regarded as exceptional. On the average masses
of mankind, the special employments which they pursue, or the kinds of
business which they transact, have the effect of moulding them into
distinct classes, each of which bears an artificially induced character
peculiarly its own. Clergymen, as such, differ from merchants and
soldiers, and all three from lawyers and physicians. Each of these
professions has long borne in our literature, and in common opinion, a
character so clearly appreciable by the public generally, that, when
truthfully reproduced in some new work of fiction, or exemplified by
some transaction in real life, it is at once recognised as marked by the
genuine class-traits and peculiarities. But the professional
characteristics descend much lower in the scale than is usually
supposed. There is scarce a trade or department of manual labour that
does not induce its own set of peculiarities--peculiarities which,
though less within the range of the observation of men in the habit of
recording what they remark