ul mood that I rode away from the
parsonage. Numerous and hearty were the maledictions I bestowed upon a
system of education which, while it was so ineffective with the many,
was so pernicious to the few. Miserable delusion (thought I), that
encourages the ruin of health and the perversion of intellect by studies
that are as unprofitable to the world as they are destructive to the
possessor--that incapacitate him for public, and unfit him for private
life--and that, while they expose him to the ridicule of strangers,
render him the victim of his wife, and the prey of his domestic.

Busied in such reflections, I rode quickly on till I found myself once
more on the heath. I looked anxiously round for the conspicuous equipage
of Lady Chester, but in vain--the ground was thin--nearly all the higher
orders had retired--the common people, grouped together, and clamouring
noisily, were withdrawing: and the shrill voices of the itinerant
hawkers of cards and bills had at length subsided into silence. I rode
over the ground, in the hope of finding some solitary straggler of
our party. Alas! there was not one; and, with much reluctance at, and
distaste to, my lonely retreat, I turned in a homeward direction from
the course.

The evening had already set in, but there was a moon in the cold grey
sky, that I could almost have thanked in a sonnet for a light which I
felt was never more welcomely dispensed, when I thought of the cross
roads and dreary country I had to pass before I reached the longed for
haven of Chester Park. After I had left the direct road, the wind, which
had before been piercingly keen, fell, and I perceived a dark cloud
behind, which began slowly to overtake my steps. I care little, in
general, for the discomfort of a shower; yet, as when we are in one
misfortune we always exaggerate the consequence of a new one, I looked
upon my dark pursuer with a very impatient and petulant frown, and set
my horse on a trot, much more suitable to my inclination than his own.
Indeed, he seemed fully alive to the cornless state of the parson's
stable, and evinced his sense of the circumstance by a very languid mode
of progression, and a constant attempt, whenever his pace abated, and I
suffered the rein to slumber upon his neck, to crop the rank grass that
sprung up on either side of our road. I had proceeded about three miles
on my way, when I heard the clatter of hoofs behind me. My even pace
soon suffered me to be overtaken