“How many hats, and ‘upper Bens,’ and new coats,
How many wretched duckings hast thou saved me
Well—­I have done—­but must be still indebted

                To my umbrella!”

Another such trifle may be permissible, as thus:  also about an umbrella, a stolen one.  On the occasion of my loss I wrote this to rebuke the thief, “The height of honesty:”—­

“Three friends once, in the course of conversation,
Touch’d upon honesty:  ‘No virtue better,’
Says Dick, quite lost in sweet self-admiration,
’I’m sure I’m honest;—­ay—­beyond the letter: 
You know the field I rent; beneath the ground
My plough stuck in the middle of a furrow
And there a pot of golden coins I found! 
My landlord has it, without fail, to-morrow.’ 
Thus modestly his good intents he told: 
‘But stay,’ says Bob,’ we soon shall see who’s best,
A stranger left with me uncounted gold! 
But I’ll not touch it; which is honestest?’
‘Your honest acts I’ve heard,’ says Jack, ’but I
Have done much better, would that all folks learn’d it,
Mine is the highest pitch of honesty—­
I borrow’d an umbrella and—­return’d it!!’”.

N.B.—­I remember that Dr. Buckland, whose geological lectures I attended, had the words “Stolen from Dr. Buckland” engraved on the ivory handle of his umbrella:  he never lost it again.

In the way of prose, not printed (though much later on I have since published “Paterfamilias’s Diary of Everybody’s Tour”) I have kept journals of holiday travel passim, whereof I now make a brief mention.  Six juvenile bits of authorship are before me, ranging through the summers of 1828 to 1835 inclusive; each neatly written in its note-book on the spot and at the time (therefore fresh and true) decorated with untutored sketches, and all full of interest ab least to myself in old memories, faded interests, and departed friends.  As very rare survivals of the past (for who cares to keep as I have done his schoolboy journals of half a century ago?) I will give at haphazard from each in its order of time a short quotation by way of sample,—­a brick to represent the house.  My first, A.D. 1828, records how my good father took his sons through the factories of Birmingham and the potteries of Staffordshire, down an iron mine and a salt mine, &c. &c., thus teaching us all we could learn energetically and intelligently; it details also how we were hospitably entertained for a week in each place by the magnate hosts of Holkar Hall and Inveraray Castle; and how we did all touristic devoirs by lake, mountain, ruin, and palace:  in fact, a short volume in MS., whereof quite at random here is a specimen page.  “Melrose looks at a distance very little ruinous, but more like a perfect cathedral.  While the horses were being changed we walked to see this Abbey, a splendid ruin, with two very light and beautiful oriel windows to the east and south, besides many smaller ones; the