14 MEMOIR. 



year or two, he was far ahead of me in all the theory and some of 

 the practice of ' wild sports.' But it was under the tuition of a 

 certain old pensioner, who, in virtue of his weekly function in the 

 school, went by the name of the drill-sergeant, that we both at- 

 tained to no mean proficiency in spinning for trout and trolling for 

 pike in the river Arun whenever we could shirk out of bounds on 

 half-holidays, as well as in setting night-lines artistically for eels. 



" Even at that time St John had the zoological bump largely 

 developed. His box (or scobb, as we used to call it, after the 

 Winchester fashion) was generally a sort of menagerie dormice 

 in the one till, stag-beetles of gigantic size and wonderful cater- 

 pillars in paper boxes in the other, while sometimes a rabbit, some- 

 times a guinea-pig, or perhaps a squirrel, was lodged below in a cell 

 cunningly constructed of the Delphin classics and Ainsworth's 

 Dictionary. He was scarcely without live-stock of some sort. 



" I think he must have left Midhurst after remaining there 

 about four years, and then I lost sight of him for a time. In 1828 

 (I think) I found him appointed to a clerkship in the Treasury, 

 junior to an old schoolfellow of ours, Edward Ricketts, who, years 

 afterwards, married a sister of Mrs St John's." Mr Jeans speaks 

 of his life at this time as " somewhat fast : his connections gave 

 him the entree everywhere (his aunt, Lady Sefton, was then a great 

 leader), and the result was his giving the Treasury, as he used 

 himself to say, ' notice to quit/ to prevent the proceedings being 

 reversed, and he left town. Here is a hiatus in his history, or 

 rather in my history of him. Ricketts could fill this page." Mr 

 Ricketts is good enough to recall for me his recollection of his 

 schoolfellow and fellow-clerk at the Treasury. Their intimacy 

 began, he says, " while St John was chafing like a caged eagle at 

 the desk of a Government office." And here Mr Ricketts has some 

 remarks which I cannot refrain from copying : " If parents would 

 but study the happiness and the probable success of their children 

 rather than their own convenience in getting them off their hands, 

 they would not commit such a fatal mistake as that of expecting a 

 high-spirited lad, with our late friend's restless spirit and love of 

 sport, to settle down to the drudgery of a clerkship. He had 



