was punished. Pass over the moist lavatory,
where, shivering, we endeavoured to turn
indomitable taps, and to mollify unsoftenable
soap. Pass over the five minutes past
in the refectory for prayers (how sincerely,
though undevoutly, we used to wish it was
for breakfast, where a Pater noster, an Ave
Maria, and a Pro peccatis were said by the boy
who had it in rotation to do so). Pass over
these, and come with us to our class-rooms—
long, bare, desk-furnished, map-hung galleries;
the only difference between which and
English school-rooms was, that the masters
had pupils instead of desks, and that one
extremity of the apartment was garnished with
a huge black board called the " tableau" on
one side of which hung a sponge fastened to a
string, and on the other a box of pieces of
chalk.*

* We speak of the black board, as peculiar to French
schools, as it was a dozen years ago; but its use is
becoming very general now in English places of education,
especially in those conducted on the Pestalozzian system.

We confess we never could manage the
before-breakfast lessons, to which, from six
till eight, we were daily doomed. In summer
we sighed for a run in the fields; in winter
the attention due to our Caesars and Virgils
was wofully disturbed by attempts to keep our
fingers warmed by blowing on them. There
was a stove situated very nearly at the top or
post of honour of the class; and we are afraid
that our occasional elevation to the post of
"first boy " was due more to our love of
warmth than to our love of learning. At
eight—after more, though briefer, prayer—
we adjourned in joyous file to the refectory,
where to each boy was served a capacious
bowl, holding about a quart of hot milk, into
which was poured about a gill of coffee. With
this we were entitled to take literally as much
bread as ever we chose; large hunches of the
staff of life, cut from loaves bearing a strong
resemblance, in size and shape, to cart-wheels,
being assiduously handed about in baskets.
Twenty minutes were allowed for this meal;
then followed a scamper in the play-ground
till nine o'clock, when the day-boys arrived,
the middle-aged boys into their respective
classes, and the collegians to the Collège
Bourbon, which was in the adjacent Rue St.
Lazare, and approached, of course, through
the never-failing Miresmonisl. We were too
closely under the surveillance of our pions to
turn our short daily voyages in the streets to
any advantage in the way of purchasing
forbidden dainties, visiting wax-work shows, or
indulging in any of those eccentricities in
which it is the nature of boys, when " out of
bounds," to delight. Indeed, we should have
preferred, on the whole, performing the daily
journeys to and from college in carriages;
for we were, on most occasions, sadly harassed
and maltreated by hosts of the little blackguard
boys—those long-haired, short-bloused,
ragged urchins, the gamins de Paris. They
lay await for us in shady places and dark
entries; they made savage forays on us from
solitary portes cochères; they flung offensive
missiles at us, and splashed the malodorous
contents of gutters in our faces. Their principal
enmity to us, we suppose, was caused by
our not having holes in our trousers, as they
had.

The class-rooms at college were very like
our class-rooms at school, save that there
were no desks, and we wrote upon our knees,
and that the masters wore square black caps,
and long gowns, somewhat resembling those
in which are apparelled the vergers "of our
ancient and venerable cathedrals. Here, at
college, we asked, from nine till twelve, for
what soft youth Pyrrha decked her golden
hair; we expressed our indignation at the
conduct of the faithless shepherd, Paris;
we despised the ostentation of Persian
magnificence, and we performed those curious
and intricate feats of tumbling with Greek
verbs, which always remind us now of the
acrobatic gentlemen in spangles and cotton
drawers, who tie themselves into knots, and
twist themselves in the boa-constrictor
manner about the legs and backs of chairs. At
twelve we went back again to the Pension,
where we made breakfast Number Two off
hot meat, vegetables, fruit, with the fourth of
a bottle of wine for each boy. Then, play
till two; school or college till five; back to
dinner, where we had pretty much the same
sort of repast as breakfast Number Two,
with the addition of soup, cheese, and a
larger allowance of wine (vin ordinaire),
be it understood. After dinner we played
until seven; got up our exercises for next
day until nine; then, after another Pater
noster, Ave Maria, and Pro peccatis, went
to bed.

Of course, we grumbled; boys always
will—even men occasionally will. We threw
out scornful insinuations respecting the
quality of the soup. One of our middle-aged
boys averred that he had seen, with his
own eyes, François, the servant, filling up
the wine-bottles at the pump. We grumbled
at the eggs or lentils on Fridays and fast
days; at the quality of the bread; at the
ill-temper of the masters; at the length
of the lessons; at the brevity of the
playtime. Yet, putting the Pension Gogo in
comparison with some highly-respectable, and
even expensive (and of course aristocratic)
establishments for the education of youth in
this favoured island—remembering the "stick-
jaw pudding," "resurrection pie," sour table-
beer, and hound-like treatment boys occasion-
ally meet with in Albion the free—it strikes
us that we were really not badly treated in
the victualling line, and that we had not
much cause to grumble.

There were three remarkable characteristics
of the Pension Gogo, to which we would
wish to call attention; yea, three marvels,
which deserve, we think, a line apiece. The
boys seldom, it ever, spent their pocket-money