"eldest hope" from Cambridge, it was suggested, that perhaps Miss Morton would not object to accompany her brother, and dine in Lower Grosvenor-street. It was a proposal that was not much liked either by Agnes or her parents; but a wish to avoid giving offence to the Bagshawes induced them to comply.

CHAPTER VII.

Cette fatuité de quelques femmes de la ville, que cause en elles une mauvaise imitation de celles de la cour, est quelque chose de pire que la grossièreté des femmes du peuple, et que la rusticité des villageoises: elle a sur toutes deux l'affectation de plus.

BRUYERE.

On the appointed day, at a late hour (for the Bagshawes, thinking lateness fashionable, determined to be correct in that at least), Agnes and her brother repaired to Lower Grosvenor-street. They were very cordially received: Mr. Bagshawe exerted his best powers of speech to give the welcome; and his lady, glowing under a large red turban, as gorgeous as a full blown peony, squeezed the small white fingers of Agnes, between her own fat hot hands, and dragged her off to the fire-side. She then introduced her im

mediately to a heavy-looking elderly couple of the name of Jones, who were said to have remembered seeing her when, as Mrs. Bagshawe said, exemplifying by action, she was "not so high."

Who among our readers, lately arrived at womanhood, or manhood, will not sympathise with Agnes? Few of the minor miseries that wait on introductions are more annoying than the being presented, or rather exhibited, to under-bred people who had seen you when you were a child. Topic and interest are all on their side; and you, the unhappy presentée, have nothing to say, and little to feel, except the oppressive difficulty of being sufficiently grateful for the extent of their memory, and the curiosity with which they regard you. Then come the personal observations-the growth-. the likeness-and the alteration-and the "never should have known you;" or the assurances of instantaneous recognition; to neither of which remarks have you any thing to reply; and the good

people con you over as unceremoniously as if you were still the child they left you, and seem almost surprised to find that you behave like a grown up person.

All this did Agnes undergo from Mr. and Mrs. Jones; a Mr. and Mrs. Jones whom she was not conscious of having ever seen before, and of whose history she knew nothing. She envied her brother for having "bloomed unseen" in his days of childhood, and for his present exemption from all recognition. In -consideration of her own distresses, she could hardly feel inclined to reprove the repulsiveness of his bow to them, and the abruptness with which he turned away from them to talk to Richard Bagshawe, whom half a year passed at Cambridge, since we met him last at Huntley Park, had in some degree tended to improve.

College life was a topic of common interest to the two young men, and they began to discuss the comparative merits of the sister Universities. The conversation that ensued might have astonished

an uninitiated listener, who should expect to hear English flowing, in its utmost purity, from the lips of two students fresh from these celebrated seats of learning. But the English of their halls and combination-rooms bears too often a comparative purity with the Latin of the schools. Universities have their shibboleth, as well as the Ring. These two young men were both in their freshman's year, and were rather unnecessarily proud of their newly-acquired jargon. They talked of men with whom they had wined; the factious struggles of "Town" and "Gown;" the necessary evils of

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99 scouts and " gyps;" "battles," meaning those of the buttery; and "commons," not the third estate, but of that kind which are sometimes called short. Then spake they of their studies. The Cantab ridiculed a Johnian, who muzzed hard the last term for a Senior Op., that he might stand for the medal, but only got a wooden spoon; and the Oxonian calmly reproved the presumption of a man who had

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