CHAPTER VI.

MR. STERLING MOODY.

"He that's proud, eats up himself."

SHAKSPEARE.-Troilus and Cressida.

In truth, the good doctor's really good heart rather smote him. "I have hurt the boy," said he to himself; "but all for his good. A velvet cap from St. Swithin's would be an extraordinary thing. I have set myself against it, even with the sons of court bankers. These are not times to confound still more the distinctions of rank." By all which it should seem, if it have not so appeared already, that Dr. Gaston was no inconsiderable aristocrat.

As for the poor aspirant, his misery was indeed great. He hurried to his rooms, with a quick step and palpitating heart, and throwing himself on his bed, gave way to an absolute flood of grief-of which, when we consider He the cause, we are thoroughly ashamed. vowed vengeance against his Principal, whom he

even called names, the softest of which were upstart and time-server-the latter any thing but deserved; and at that moment two gold tufts, and as many velvet caps, passing his window in high glee and spirits, he wished them all, and himself too, at the bottom of the sea.

In this situation, like Achilles eating his heart, he passed near a quarter of an hour before he noticed a letter lying on the table, which had arrived during his absence. It was his father's answer, containing a flat denial of his request.

Sir Robert Sterling, as may have been perceived, though little brilliant, nay rather a plodder, was a man of that sort of sense called mother-wit:-abnormis sapiens. He had already begun to lament the hour when he gave way to his wife's wishes to remove his son from the peaceful, unpretending Hackney, to the superintendence of a proud private tutor, who took for pupils none but of "the genteelest families," and seemed much to have condescended in admitting Robert to a share of his attention.

As, when in town, the said tutor always lodged in a back-yard of Mivart's hotel, it was downright impossible for him to drag up to the neighbourhood of Cornhill; and accordingly he had never seen Sir Robert but once (when they

met half way, at uncle George's lodgings), and Lady Sterling never at all. The citizen was, however, satisfied with his son's reported progress. He deferred much to the literary character of the tutor, which, in fact, added to his wife's importunities, mainly decided him in sending him to Oxford, instead of what was his own darling project, to establish him at Amsterdam· But young Sterling's letters gave him every thing but comfort; and in this Lady Sterling was a fellow-sufferer; for the letters did not conceal the mortifications of the writer. Even the plain good knight, generally so unruffled, vented a little spleen upon this occasion, and bestowed the appellation of proud pedant upon Dr. Gaston. He would then revive his complaints, that he had ever been persuaded by a foolish gentlemanusher, a woman who could know nothing of these things, and a parson who had no doubt his own ends to answer in serving his college (such were the notions of the cautious knight), -to make his son unhappy, by removing him from his proper sphere. "Grant," said he, "that he may get more Greek and Latin, which I have heard is very doubtful; will that teach him the knowledge of exchanges, which I want him to know? Then, as to his young sprigs of nobility,

if any thing could make me a radical, it would be the airs they give themselves; though that does not excuse this silly boy for taking it to heart. He must be moved-moved to Amsterdam; and then what will become of all the fees I have paid for him at Oxford ?”

"There is a tide in the affairs of men !”

but this time it was not in favour of Robert Sterling. His letter, and request to become a Gentleman Commoner arrived in one of those moments of complaint just described, and the effect may be imagined. The knight of St. Swithin's would not hear of it. "He complains of their being all insolent puppies," said he, “and yet he wants to become one of them himself.”

In vain Lady Sterling used her eloquence and intreaties, or talked of the lustre it would shed upon the family, and even the occasion it might give for the acquaintance of better connected young men than usually visited them: a critical point where there was a daughter just coming out. The merchant was inexorable.

"The boy," said he, " has his fortune to make. I will not mar it by adding to his vanity. However," he added, as if recollecting himself, "I know this is uncle George's doing; the

allowance is to be four hundred a-year. Let uncle George pay it, and I will consent."

This was the severest cut against the pinched courtier, his brother-in-law, the knight ever gave; though he was not disinclined to make hits against pride and poverty, when opportunity offered. The gentleman-usher, however, who found that Bloomsbury Square was really not intolerable, and far more convenient for dining than the verge of the City, put up with it, and peace was always preserved.

To return to Robert,-great was his mortification at his father's answer; the more so, because not only the Principal knew, and had ridiculed, his application, but he had not concealed it from others; and though he loved and respected Wilson, he had not been able to prevent a sort of seeming triumph over the scholar of St. John's from escaping in his manner and tone, when he confided to him his expectation of soon being upon an equality with the persons who had given him such uneasiness.

"And are you sure," observed the shrewd Wilson, "that your real object will then succeed? Will your velvet cap place you upon a velvet footing with these honourable exclusives? Will they speak to you the sooner, or forget the