1831.] " Liberal Notions." 511 



spirit, no humour among them. Look at them lumbering up to the 

 city by coach-loads every morning from Islington, Pentonville, Somers' 

 Town, Paddington, Chelsea, Highgate, Hampstead, Camberwell, Peck- 

 ham, and from ten thousand other places ; and then lumbering back 

 again in the evening, so stupified with book-keeping, that they can 

 hardly tell the difference between beef and pudding. They spend their 

 whole lives among figures, and so they never make a figure in life. But 

 if I was disgusted with common arithmetic, how much greater was my 

 contempt of fractions — bits, pieces, odds and ends, cheese-parings, 

 hair-splittings ! People may well call them vulgar fractions. Why, if 

 I was too liberal to care for ten or a dozen, one way or other, was I 

 likely to care two straws for fractions, — for halves, quarters, eighths, 

 and sixteenths } — Nonsense ! I told the man so to his face. " Sir," 

 said I, " give me leave to tell you, that I shall not chain myself down 

 to your trumpery fractions ; I have had plague enough to learn your 

 common rules, and 1 will not stoop my aspiring spirit to calculate sums 

 less than a farthing. Give me the generosity and nobleness of spirit 

 that is above the meanness of calculation." 



I believe the man was struck for a moment at the grandeur and sub- 

 limity of my ideas, for he looked upon me with emotion and astonish- 

 ment, while a smile of admiration was playing upon his features ; but 

 presently, summoning up the whole schoolmaster within him, he replied: 

 "All this is pretty talk— very pretty talk, indeed; but how am I to 

 shew my face to your father, if I neglect to teach you what you are sent 

 here to learn. I am absolutely I'obbing your father." 



" Well, Sir," said I, " rob my father if you like, I am not so narrow- 

 minded as to concern myself about that." 



" The boy is mad," said the fellow. Ah, that is the way I have 

 always found it through life. Whenever any individual at all superior 

 to the common run of mortals dares to act and speak from the generous 

 impulses of a noble nature, forthwith all the low-minded sordid sons of 

 calculation exclaim " He is mad !" Poor narrow-souled wretches ! They 

 have no notion of any thing that is free and generous ; they are made 

 to draw in harness — to follow a leader — never to act from the impulses 

 of a towering spirit ! 



A few months after I had left school, my father said to me, " Bob," 

 and I said " Yes, Sir." " It does not appear to me, Bob," said my 

 father, " that you are much the better for school." " No, Sir," replied 

 I, " nor to me neither. I think it a great mercy that I am none the 

 worse. That mean-spirited fellow was always endeavouring to instil 

 into me his own narrow notions, and making such a ridiculous fuss if a 

 sum was not right to a farthing ! Oh, Sir, I could not bear such beg- 

 garly notions. What is a farthing, more or less, to a gentleman, and a 

 man of liberal ideas .''" 



My father shook his head, and said, " Now, my dear Bob, let me talk 

 seriously to you." Then I shook my head in return, and said " Now, 

 my dear fatlier, pray don't." 



" But my dear Bob," said my father, " how do you expect to get 

 through the world, without a little prudence and consideration .''" " Wliy, 

 as to the matter of that, Sir," rej)lied I, " I may get through the world 

 sooner without prudence than with." " But," said my fatlier, " it be- 

 comes a matter of importance tliat you sliould now choose a profession." 

 '' Un that point," I said, " I am perfectly indifferent ; but whatever 



