him, and, having
been at half a dozen balls and evening parties, retreated before their
dulness and sameness; and whenever anybody made inquiries of the worthy
Major about his nephew the old gentleman said the young rascal was
reformed, and could not be got away from his books. But the Major would
have been almost as much horrified as Mr. Paley was, had he known what
was Mr. Pen's real course of life, and how much pleasure entered into
his law studies.

A long morning's reading, a walk in the park, a pull on the river, a
stretch up the hill to Hampstead, and a modest tavern dinner; a bachelor
night passed here or there, in joviality, not vice (for Arthur Pendennis
admired women so heartily that he never could bear the society of any
of them that were not, in his fancy at least, good and pure); a quiet
evening at home, alone with a friend and a pipe or two, and a humble
potation of British spirits, whereof Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress,
invariably tested the quality;--these were our young gentleman's
pursuits, and it must be owned that his life was not unpleasant. In
term-time, Mr. Pen showed a most praiseworthy regularity in performing
one part of the law-student's course of duty, and eating his dinners
in Hall. Indeed, that Hall of the Upper Temple is a sight not
uninteresting, and with the exception of some trifling improvements and
anachronisms which have been introduced into the practice there, a
man may sit down and fancy that he joins in a meal of the seventeenth
century. The bar have their messes, the students their tables apart;
the benchers sit at the high table on the raised platform surrounded by
pictures of judges of the law and portraits of royal personages who have
honoured its festivities with their presence and patronage. Pen looked
about, on his first introduction, not a little amused with the scene
which he witnessed. Among his comrades of the student class there
were gentlemen of all ages, from sixty to seventeen; stout grey-headed
attorneys who were proceeding to take the superior dignity,--dandies
and men--about town who wished for some reason to be barristers of seven
years' standing,--swarthy, black-eyed natives of the Colonies, who came
to be called here before they practised in their own islands,--and many
gentlemen of the Irish nation, who make a sojourn in Middle Temple
Lane before they return to the green country of their birth. There were
little squads of reading students who talked law all