"I ask her pardon," replied Mr. Wellings, "but it is as well she should know the truth." Surely, sir," said Mrs. Bonville, " you do not mean to assert that my son has failed ?"

"It is so, madam, I fear it is so," said Dr. Crocket, perceiving that Wellings was silent.

"It cannot be, it cannot be !" exclaimed the poor mother, as soon as she comprehended the real state of the case. And now indeed was she to be pitied; and the more so, because she was utterly unprepared for this blow. First, she broke out into a violent flood of hysterical tears, next she reproached Dr. Crocket in no very measured terms with having deceived her respecting the real state of Edgar's acquirements; and, lastly, rushing from the room, she left the Doctor to inquire more concerning this affair of Wellings.

"How was it? how does it stand, Mr. Wellings?" he asked. "Have they been hard on the young man? Did they push him? Is the case a decided one ?"

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They dealt so fairly by him," replied Wellings," that they would have got him through if they could; but he blundered and stammered outrageously from the very first."

"He was agitated," said Dr. Crocket; "he wanted nerve-nerve is much in an affair of this kind."

"No doubt," replied Wellings," a little impudence is often very useful in life; like a good horse, it carries a man a long way at a push."

"And sometimes gives him a terrible fall

also," retorted the Doctor, in considerable irritation.

"May be so," replied Wellings; "howver, as I tell you, Bonville stammered deu cedly from the beginning; still we that stood by hoped he might do, till he stumbled on some abominable error in his divinity. I did not at first catch the words he used, but some of the men near me said, that he had imputed the Revelations to the pen of John the Baptist, or some other such monstrosity. However, be it what it might, this blunder was the settler, for he was dismissed immediately after he had stumbled upon it; or, in other words, received permission to go hang himself as soon as he pleased, by a gentle hint that his presence was no longer required."

"That divinity," remarked Dr. Crocket"that divinity often proves the ruin of a man, from his supposing that as he has heard the Scriptures from infancy, he has less need of making them a particular study."

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"True, Doctor," replied Wellings; which account I am resolved, that I will get up the New Testament the first month I have at command."

"You then consider that Bonville's case is a decided one?" asked the Doctor.

"He is as surely plucked as I stand here," replied Mr. Wellings; "and it is very certain that he must be well crammed before he feathers again.

"Humph!" said the Doctor, "if cramming would have done, Mr. Wellings, or rather, if the steady laborious appliance of mental and learned stimuli would have availed with the youth-of

stimuli administered from hour to hour, through the course of months, nay, of years—if these, I say, could have availed with the young man, he would never have been subjected to the mortification which he has this day experienced; but his idleness is invincible-pondus inutile tellu ris-born only to bring disgrace on his friends;" and the Doctor took a turn in the room-the very sound of his steps indicating the irritation of his feelings.

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Nevertheless," remarked Wellings, as he stood in a careless attitude, regarding the sufferings of his companion much as he would have done those of a rat under the fangs of a ferret

"he may do well yet; that is, when next examined, if he will be advised in the mean time to keep clear of that weak mother of his, and get something more of the spirit of a man; to which last, by-the-bye, old Mr. Dalben and his favourite, Milner, will not help him."

"There you are right," said the Doctor; "that was a very ill-judged business-his being sent to idle his time in Worcestershire during the last long vacation. He ought certainly to have been with me at that time; but that which has been done is past and gone."

"Well," said Wellings, "if what is done is done, what's the use of fretting? many a goose has been plucked as clean as Bonville now is, and yet gone through in full feather some months afterwards."

"He will never do himself any credit in the university, I fear," said Dr. Crocket; "his mother, poor woman, thinks him a youth of talent;" and there the Doctor ceased to speak.

"And you and some others," rejoined Wellings, "have a different opinion; but the fact is, that he is slow, and that he is as idle as if he had powers to work double tides when his interest required that he should do so. I betted two crowns to one with Sam. Hargrave last summer, that it would turn out with Bonville as it has done. I only wish the silver had been gold; but I'll have the crown, however."

"I wish, sir," said the Doctor, "that you had given me a hint of this your opinion yesterday, when we met.

"How was I to do that?" said Wellings, laughing. "What! give advice on college matters to a D.D. of the university!-But, Doctor, did you ever hear of the fellow they called the Whale ?"

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No," replied Dr. Crocket, resuming his impatient march, which he had interrupted for the moment, in his heart wishing that his tormentor, whom he could not easily shake off, were in a whale's belly, or anywhere else out of his sight and hearing.

"I'll tell you then," continued Wellings: "it was a fellow who was plucked here some years since; and what for, think you?-for making the very best answer to a question put to him that ever proceeded from the mouth of an undergraduate. He was required to tell what beast was recorded in the Old Testament to have spoken as men speak? To which he most sapiently answered, And the whale said unto Moses, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian."

"Pshaw!" exclaimed Dr. Crocket, could have uttered such absurdities."

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"Nevertheless, so it was," replied Wellings; "and was it not excellent? It was much too good to proceed from anything but genuine ignorance-the man was dubbed the knight of the whale at the time, and retained his title as long as he was a member of the university. However, I think I have heard that he floundered through the examination some time afterwards, and took his degree."

"And what have they made of him ?” asked Dr. Crocket peevishly.

"Farther the deponent saith not," returned Wellings; "but it is presumed he was not fitted for the law, though he might do well enough for the administration of the gospel."

"What do you mean by that?" asked the Doctor angrily a question which Wellings not choosing to answer, dashed on again in the same sarcastic strain as before: "Yet I don't know," said he; "if a man does not get some sort of celebrity by a very monstrous blunder, which he misses by a common-place one,-he has nothing to do, after a thing of this kind, but to face it out, and vow he said it to pose the bigwigs, and make them wrinkle their brows; and then he will be set down as a famous dare-devil, and establish his character for wit with half the under-graduates in the university."

"Are you accounted a wit in Oxford, sir?" asked the Doctor drily.

Again Wellings was deaf, though so little abashed, that he went on as before-" I tell