ficial friends are a brave race, but in mere
indignation and disgust to see troops so shamefully ill-officered as
ours, which it would be a disgrace to look in the face on the field,
either in column or line. Therefore they never stand a charge, but are
off in legions of honour, eagles and all, before troops that have been
so uniformly flogged from time immemorial, as to have no other name but
raw lobsters, led on by officers all shivering or benumbed under the
"cold shade of aristocracy," like Picton and Pack.

We once thought of going ourselves to the English Bar, but were
dissuaded from doing so by some judicious friends, who assured us we
should only be throwing away our great talents and unexampled eloquence;
for that success depended solely on interest, and we had none we knew
of, either in high places or in low, and had then never seen an
attorney. We wept for the fate of many dear friends in wigs, and made a
pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On our return from Palestine and other foreign
parts, behold them all bending under briefs, bound by retaining fees,
or, like game-hawks, wheeling in airy circuits over the rural provinces,
and pouncing down on their prey, away to their eyries with talonfuls,
which they devoured at their luxurious leisure, untroubled by any callow
young! They now compose the Bench.

Ere we set off for Salem, we had thoughts of entering the Church, and of
becoming Bishops. But it was necessary, we were told, first to be tutor
to a lord. That, in our pride, we could not stomach; but if ours had not
been the sin by which Satan fell, where now had been the excellent
Howley? All our habits in youth led us to associate much with intending
divines. A few of them are still curates; but 'twere vain to try to
count the vicars, rectors, canons, deans, archdeacons, and bishops, with
whom, when we were all undergraduates together at Oxford, we used to do
nothing but read Greek all day, and Latin all night. Yet you hear
nothing but abuse of such a Church! and are told to look at the
Dissenters. We do look at them, and an uglier set we never saw; not one
in a hundred, in his grimness, a gentleman. Not a single scholar have
they got to show; and now that Hall is mute, not one orator. Their
divinity is of the dust--and their discourses dry bones. Down with the
old Universities--up with new. The old are not yet down, but the new are
up; and how dazzling the contrast, even to the purblind! You may hew
down trees, but