ssumption and impertinence passes off with extreme
youth: but it is curious to watch the conceit of a generous and clever
lad--there is something almost touching in that early exhibition of
simplicity and folly.

So, after reading pretty hard of a morning, and, I fear, not law merely,
but politics and general history and literature, which were as necessary
for the advancement and instruction of a young man as mere dry law,
after applying with tolerable assiduity to letters, to reviews, to
elemental books of law, and, above all, to the newspaper, until the hour
of dinner was drawing nigh, these young gentlemen would sally out upon
the town with great spirits and appetite, and bent upon enjoying a merry
night as they had passed a pleasant forenoon. It was a jovial time, that
of four-and-twenty, when every muscle of mind and body was in healthy
action, when the world was new as yet, and one moved over it spurred
onwards by good spirits and the delightful capability to enjoy. If ever
we feel young afterwards, it is with the comrades of that time: the
tunes we hum in our old age, are those we learned then. Sometimes,
perhaps, the festivity of that period revives in our memory; but how
dingy the pleasure-garden has grown, how tattered the garlands look, how
scant and old the company, and what a number of the lights have gone
out since that day! Grey hairs have come on like daylight streaming
in--daylight and a headache with it. Pleasure has gone to bed with the
rouge on her cheeks. Well, friend, let us walk through the day, sober
and sad, but friendly.

I wonder what Laura and Helen would have said, could they have seen, as
they might not unfrequently have done had they been up and in London, in
the very early morning when the bridges began to blush in the sunrise,
and the tranquil streets of the city to shine in the dawn, Mr. Pen and
Mr. Warrington rattling over the echoing flags towards the Temple, after
one of their wild nights of carouse--nights wild, but not so wicked as
such nights sometimes are, for Warrington was a woman-hater; and Pen, as
we have said, too lofty to stoop to a vulgar intrigue. Our young Prince
of Fairoaks never could speak to one of the sex but with respectful
courtesy, and shrank from a coarse word or gesture with instinctive
delicacy--for though we have seen him fall in love with a fool, as his
betters and inferiors have done, and as it is probable that he did more
than once in his life, yet for th