riddle, for 'a nice opening for a young man,' is
totally ignorant of the opportunities, if not for fame and fortune, at
least for competency and comfort, that Literature now offers to a clever
lad. He looks round him; he sees the Church leading nowhere, with much
greater certainty of expense than income, and demanding a huge sum for
what is irreverently termed 'gate money;' he sees the Bar, with its high
road leading indeed to the woolsack, but with a hundred by-ways leading
nowhere in particular, and full of turnpikes--legal tutors, legal fees,
rents of chambers, etc.--which he has to defray; he sees Physic, at
which Materfamilias sniffs and turns her nose up. 'Her Jack, with such
agreeable manners, to become a saw-bones! Never!' He sees the army, and
thinks, since Jack has such great abilities, it seems a pity to give him
a red coat, which costs also considerably more than a black one; And how
is Jack to live upon his pay?

After all, indeed, however prettily one puts it, the question is with
him, not so much '_What_ is my Jack to be?' as '_How_ is my Jack to
live?' To one who has any gift of humour there are few things more
amusing than to observe how this vulgar, but really rather important
inquiry, is ignored by those who take the subject of modern education in
hand. They are chiefly schoolmasters, who are not so deep in their books
but that they can spare a glance or two in the direction of their
banker's account; or fellows of colleges who have no children, and
therefore never feel the difficulties of supporting them. Heaven forbid
that so humble an individual as myself should question their wisdom, or
say anything about them that should seem to smack of irreverence; but I
do believe that (with one or two exceptions I have in my mind) the
system they have introduced among us is the Greatest Humbug in the
universe. In the meantime poor Paterfamilias (who is the last man, they
flatter themselves, to find this out) stands with his hands (and very
little else) in his pockets, regarding his clever offspring, and
wondering what he shall do with him. He remembers to have read about a
man on his deathbed, who calls his children about him and thanks God,
though he has left them nothing to live upon, he has given them a good
education, and tries to extract comfort from the reminiscence. That he
has spent money enough upon Jack's education is certain; something
between two or three thousand pounds in all at least, the inter