“O running stream of sparkling joy
    To be a soaring human boy!”

exclaimed Mr. Chadband in a moment of inspiration.  “In the strictest sense a boy,” was Mr. Gladstone’s expressive phrase in his controversy with Colonel Dopping.  For my own part, I confess to a frank dislike of boys.  I dislike them equally whether they are priggish boys, like Kenelm Chillingly, who asked his mother if she was never overpowered by a sense of her own identity; or sentimental boys, like Dibbins in Basil the Schoolboy, who, discussing with a friend how to spend a whole holiday, said, “Let us go to Dingley Dell and talk about Byron;” or manly boys like Tom Tulliver, of whom it is excellently said that he was the kind of boy who is commonly spoken of as being very fond of animals—­that is, very fond of throwing stones at them.

Whatever its type,

    “I’ve seemed of late
    To shrink from happy boyhood—­boys
    Have grown so noisy, and I hate
    A noise. 
    They fright me when the beech is green,
    By swarming up its stem for eggs;
    They drive their horrid hoops between
    My legs. 
    It’s idle to repine, I know;
    I’ll tell you what I’ll do instead: 
    I’ll drink my arrowroot, and go
    To bed.”

But before I do so let me tell one boy-story, connected with the Eton and Harrow match, which has always struck me as rather pleasing.  In the year 1866, when F.C.  Cobden, who was afterwards so famous for his bowling in the Cambridge Eleven, was playing for Harrow, an affable father, by way of making conversation for a little Harrow boy at Lord’s, asked, “Is your Cobden any relation to the great Cobden?” “Why, he is the great Cobden,” was the simple and swift reply.  This is the true spirit of hero-worship.

XXXII.

LETTER-WRITING.

“Odd men write odd letters.”  This rather platitudinous sentence, from an otherwise excellent essay of the late Bishop Thorold’s, is abundantly illustrated alike by my Collections and by my Recollections.  I plunge at random into my subject, and immediately encounter the following letter from a Protestant clergyman in the north of Ireland, written in response to a suggestion that he might with advantage study Mr. Gladstone’s magnificent speech on the Second Reading of the Affirmation Bill in 1883:—­

“My dear Sir,—­I have received your recommendation to read carefully the speech of Mr. Gladstone in favour of admitting the infidel Bradlaugh into Parliament, I did so when it was delivered, and I must say that the strength of argument rests with the opposition.  I fully expect in the event of a dissolution the Government will lose between fifty and sixty seats.  Any conclusion can be arrived at, according to the premises laid down.  Mr. G. avoided the Scriptural lines and followed his own.  All parties knew the feeling of the country on the