step; but luckily I had foreseen this, or I should certainly have been pitched over his neck, and probably my back would have been broken had I not employed both hands with all my force to counteract the shock. Having measured the distance with his eye, he saw he could pass, which to me was a new danger; my legs would one or both of them have wanted room, but with the same juvenile activity I raised them on the withers, and away again we went, mutually escaping unhurt. By this time, however, my gentleman was wearied; in two minutes we were at home, and there he thought proper once more to stop."

There are several such stories of the adventures of horsemanship, which some readers would grudge passing over without a further specimen.

"A little horse was brought us from another stud, whence he had been rejected for being unmanageable. He had shown himself restive, and, besides the snaffle, was ridden in a checkrein. I was immediately placed on his back, and, what seemed rather more extraordinary, ordered to lead the gallop, as usual. I do not know how it happened, but under me he showed very little disposition to be refractory, and, whenever the humour occurred, it was soon overcome that he was, however, watchful for an opportunity to do mischief, the following incident will discover. Our time for hard exercise had begun perhaps a fortnight or three weeks. As that proceeds, the boys are less cautious, each having less suspicion of his horse. I was leading the gallop one morning, and had gone more than half the way towards the foot of Cambridge Hill, when something induced me to call and speak to a boy behind me; for which purpose I rather unseated myself, and, as I looked back, rested on my left thigh. The arch traitor no sooner felt the precarious seat I had taken, than he suddenly plunged from the path, had his head between his legs, his heels in the air, and exerting all his power of bodily contortion, flung me from the saddle with only one foot in the stirrup, and both my legs on the off side. I immediately heard the whole set of boys behind shouting triumphantly, 'A calf, a calf!' a phrase of contempt for a boy that is thrown. Though the horse was then in the midst of his wild antics, and increasing his pace to full speed, as far as the tricks he was playing would permit, still, finding I had a foot in the stirrup, I replied to their shouts by a whisper to myself, It is no calf yet.' The horse took the usual

course, turned up Cambridge Hill, and now rather increased his speed than his mischievous tricks. This opportunity I took with that rashness of spirit which is peculiar to boys; and, notwithstanding the prodigious speed and irregular motion of the horse, threw my left leg over the saddle. It was with the utmost difficulty I could preserve my balance, but I did: though by this effort I lost hold of the reins, both my feet were out of the stirrups, and the horse for a moment was entirely his own master. But my grand object was gained: I was once more firmly seated, the reins and the stirrups were recovered. In a twinkling, the horse, instead of being pulled up, was urged to his utmost speed; and when he came to the end of the gallop, he stopped of himself with a very good will, as he was heartily breathed. The short exclamations of the boys at having witnessed what they thought an impossibility, were the gratification I received, and the greatest, perhaps, that could be bestowed.

"I once saw an instance of what may be called the grandeur of alarm in a horse. In winter, during short exercise, I was returning one evening on the back of a hunter, that was put in training for the hunter's plate. There had been some little rain, and the channel, always dry in summer, was then a small brook. As I must have rubbed his legs dry if wetted, I gave him the rein, and made him leap the brook, which he understood as a challenge for play, and beginning to gambol, after a few antics he reared very high, and, plunging forward with great force, alighted with his fore feet on the edge of a deep gravel-pit half filled with water, so near that a very few inches further he must have gone headlong down. His first astonishment and fear were so great, that he stood for some time breathless and motionless: then gradually recollecting himself, his back became curved, his ears erect, his hind and fore leg in a position for sudden retreat; his nostrils from an inward snort burst into one loud expression of horror; and rearing on his hind legs, he turned short round, expressing all the terrors he had felt by the utmost violence of plunging, kicking, and other bodily exertions. I was not quite so much frightened as he had been, but I was heartily glad, when he became quiet again, that the accident had been no worse."

SELF-IMPROVEMENT.

281

III.

But

THE very rudiments of what we call education were considered quite superfluous for a stable boy of last century; and during the two or three years that this boy remained at Newmarket, however likely he might be judged to make a good jockey or groom, he was hardly in the fair way of becoming a man of letters. Yet he never forgot his early turn for reading, as often as a book came in his way, which would be seldom enough. For years the best part of his reading had been the Bible, wherever he found one, and such old ballads or other rude broadsides as were sometimes posted up on the walls of cottages and little alehouses, the library of the poor. He is not quite sure whether at this period of his life he had learned to write. poor as his attainments were, he had the true love of learning ever prompting him to self-improvement. On how many idle young gentlemen were the most costly educational facilities being mainly wasted, while this foundling child of the muses was slowly and painfully groping towards his proper birthright! Thomas had been at Newmarket some half a year, when his father followed him there, led partly by love of his son, and partly by the love of change which we have remarked in this curious character. The mother and the rest of the family have some time back disappeared from the story, where they make but a shadowy appearance at any time. Holcroft began in this new scene by getting work at the old trade of shoemaking, presently being employed to carry a mail-bag, and before long taking flight again in his restless search for fortune. One of his shopmates, also distinguished as a cock-feeder, was a man of reading and of books. He had such volumes as "Gulliver's Travels" and the "Spectator," which he lent to young Thomas, to his great profit and delight, and talked to him about them, and rejoiced the proud father by agreeing that his was no ordinary boy.

Other people besides his father and the literary cock-feeder began to take notice of Thomas's taste for scholarship. A schoolmaster in the town offered to teach such a promising pupil gratis. He gladly accepted the proposal, and at his first appearance filled the other boys with respectful admiration by spelling no less a word than Mahershalalhashbaz off-hand as

neatly as he would have cleared a five-barred gate. So he says, though after all we observe that he or his printer spells it wrong! He found himself immediately placed at the head of the school; but the master turned out to be such a drunkard that after going three times Thomas would have nothing more to do with him.

Nothing daunted by this fiasco, he paid five shillings for a three-months' course of arithmetic with a journeyman maker of leather breeches. For want of better apparatus he used to cast up his sums with an old nail upon the paling of the stableyard; but goodwill goes further than any amount of stationery, and at the end of the three months the rule of three, he says, no longer puzzled him, nor did practice drive him mad, as his companions prophesied it would. He showed a great taste for music also, which he boldly attacked both practically and theoretically, spending many a forenoon lying in the hayloft, studious over a book of psalmody, though the technical terms puzzled him sorely. He had already joined a choir for the practice of Church music, taught by the same accomplished breeches-maker, to whom, as music-master, he paid another five shillings a quarter out of his small wages. Many much richer students would not be willing to spend at the rate of half their incomes on instruction! Except a few French lessons that he once took in after life, we are told that this is the whole story of his schooling. Everything else he taught himself.

The worst of it was that with his head so full of these new studies he could not always make enough room for attention to his work. His kind master had to find fault with him for forgetfulness when he had been sent an errand, which startled him like the curb in the mouth of a high-tempered horse. Betty, John Watson's cross old housekeeper, joined the other boys in jeering at this one, who wasted his time over books and the like. He could only console himself by thinking how truly inferior spirits theirs were; indeed, we are sorry to see him a little too conscious of his own superiority. These boys were all afraid to go alone into the yard after dark. Old Betty was quite as ignorant and superstitious; she declared herself to have once been assailed by two imps of the devil, whom she defeated by taking them up with the tongs and throwing them into the hottest part of the kitchen fire! She had much to say

FEARS IN THE DARK.

283

of ghosts, goblins, and witchcraft, and it was in vain that our young philosopher tried to reason with her, having convinced himself of the facility with which the senses may be deceived and alarmed. All the rest of the boys made bargains with some other to go in couples into the yard at night; but Thomas Holcroft refusing to pair off with anyone, his namesake Tom was left without a mate. Then this other Tom had to bribe our Tom at the rate of a halfpenny a night to accompany him when it fell to his turn to fetch hay or straw, so much was it worth to be an esprit fort in a racing-stable. There is a tragic tale to tell of one of these nocturnal convoys, which gave opportunity for showing a halfpennyworth of courage.

"We had at this time in the stables a very beautiful male tabby cat, as remarkable for his familiarity with the horses and boys as for his fine colours, symmetry, and strength. He would go through the stable night by night, and place himself on the withers, first of this horse, then of the next, and there familiarly take his sleep, till he had made the whole round. The boys had taught him several tricks, which he very willingly repeated as often as they gave the signal, without taking offence at the rogueries they occasionally practised upon him; so that he was a general favourite with every one, from John Watson, even to old Betty. One evening, as I was going with Tom to get his hay, and we approached the stable in which it happened then to be kept, Tom leading the road (for cowards are always desirous to convince themselves they are really valiant), a very sudden, vehement, and discordant noise was heard, to listen to which Tom's valour was wholly unequal. Flying from the stable, he was at the back-door of the house in a twinkling. I was paid for my courage: pride and curiosity concurred to make me show it, and I remained firm at my post. I stood still, while the noise at intervals was several times repeated. It was the beginning of winter, and at one end of the stable a certain quantity of autumn wheat was stowed. I recollected this circumstance, and, after considering some time, at length the truth struck me, and I called: 'Come along, Tom; it is the cat and the rats fighting, but they will leave off when they hear us come into the stable.' We had neither candle nor lanthorn. It was a maxim with John Watson to trust no such things with boys whose nightly duty it was to fetch trusses of straw and armfuls of hay; but I entered the stable, gave Tom