I LEAVE SCHOOL, AM APPRENTICED, AND FALL IN LOVE. Olivia. What kind o' man is he? Malvolio.-Why, of man-kind. Oli. Of what personage and years is he? Mal. Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy; as a squash is before 'tis a peascod, or a codling when 'tis almost an apple? 'Tis with him even standing water, between boy and man.-Twelfth Night. Is there any transformation, in the progressive phases of our life, equal to that exhibited by him who was, yesterday, a school-boy, and is, today-not a school-boy? The merely negative conclusion just penned, was by no means anticipated. A positive contrast was unhesitatingly presupposed, and a vague distinction is the subterfuge of baffled confidence. Do we speak, then, only of the same boy under a new condition? Do we not rather speak of a new being in the same substance? It may be, that the sentient and rational thing in question is not a man; but, is it equally to be regarded as nothing more than "not a school-boy?" What does the young biped think of himself? "That," you will say, "matters little." What do the young ladies think of him? That, you must admit, matters much. Shakspeare, in his "Seven Ages," leaps at once from the school-boy to the lover; and, in his own personal example, he illustrates the transition, since he was a married man at seventeen. I allude, however, to the fractional period which usually connects, yet holds in marked division, the lad who would fain love to learn, and the youth who, in spite of himself, incontinently learns to love; and I know not that we can better designate the hero of this interval, than by calling him the "link-boy." The happiness of leaving school is just that of the brief play time which intervenes between closing the boyish book and opening the manly heart; and, during which, there is a feeling of emancipation, independence, and self-satisfaction, that almost bursts the exulting breast, however the exultation may be apparently kept down under the gravity of an assumed indifference. Is there any sense of freedom so perfect as that with which the controlled school-boy of the last December goes, in the March following, to make a call upon his former master and ci-devant playmates? With what a fulness of the voluntary spirit he "chooses" to do this! With what ineffable pride of heart he rings the front bell of the Doctor's house, instead of, with his former humility, modestly lifting the school latch! How he glories in walking-a free man-among the yet wall-bound lads in the play-yard; shaking hands with the ushers, and shortly (taking note of time by his watch) quitting his late first class cronies with a "'pon my soul, I must go! Good by, old fellows." How he kicks aside the habitual obedience in relation to "bounds;" unhesitatingly opening the outer gate in the very face of those stern old associations which still present themselves like phantom sentinels; frowning, but powerless. "Without by your leave, or with your leave," he spurns the school barrier, to revel at liberty in a play-ground which is bounded only by a never-approachable horizon; walks, with triumphant confidence and security, where he may have before skulked along as a rash and repentant truant; and is only careful to be home at the appointed dinner-hour, in respect to the value of his "word of promise" as a gentleman. And now, with reference to his bearing, as possibly the first lieutenant in his father's house. Is there any subsequent promotion so inflating as that which retains him a regular sitter at the dinner-table after the ladies have left the room? The bottle no more passes him, but he the bottle. He revolves in his mind the merits of an argument, while, with sympathetic action, he twirls the nut-crackers. He drinks "to the Ladies! In the drawing-room he rather seeks their admiration than their favour, the mere excitement of the pursuit being, as usual, the main effect of its indulgence. He is now merely trying how he likes the professional path he purposes, under conditions, to follow. It is, yet, his will to do or not do. He may never again be so great a man as he feels himself during this optional period,—during this month's experimental course of easy initiative application. It is the "honeymoon" of his existence. He goes to "the office," a little earlier, or a little later, as he may choose. He returns home to dinner, at least, if he be not "otherwise engaged," for occasionally he has an evening appointment with "one of the officefellows," which renders it advisable he should dine in town. On his first visit to a chop-house, his dignity is off its guard; for he removes his hat on entering the coffee-room, and is much abashed at being told by the smiling waiter to put it on again. This, of course, he declines to do; so, blowing a hard breath, as if he felt the heat, and blushing the expression of it, he passes his fingers through his hair, and declares, like Osrick, that he has removed his "bonnet" simply " for his own ease." With an uncertain recollection of his "Tables of Weights and Measures," he leaps at the recovery of his dignity by ordering "a pint of sherry," and, on being asked whether he'll take anything with it," he suddenly remembers the real purpose of his coming, and answers, "O-a-yes: a chop." When he reaches home at night, his mother, perceiving the result of his mistaken idea, that there are four pints in a quart, suggests to her husband the care of not being too lavish in respect to the gentleman's pocket-money. young The month's probation passed, he now consents to be "articled" to his professional master. He has, however, never been till now aware, that to be "articled" means to be "apprenticed." He does not quite like this, by reason of an habitually fixed idea, that an "articled clerk " is a superior article, and that an "apprentice" necessarily wears an apron. His dignity, on hearing the indentures read, is further offended by certain assumed possibilities of moral delinquency and ungentlemanly extern, implied in those clauses which forbid the furtive abstraction of his master's property; and which, with such insulting gratuitousness, insist on his always appearing in "good, decent, and sufficient clothing!" The restrictions on his liberty, too, as subject to his master's "consent first had and obtained," and the emphatic requirements for his behaving "in all things as a good apprentice ought to do,"-all this is a little too like school over again; but he considers these "absurd expressions, as so many mere forms of antiquated legal phraseology," and often, it must be admitted, subsequently treats them as such. Having submitted to be "bound," he is expected to be more regular in his hour of coming and going, and more earnest in his application while at the office. He, however, reconciles himself to the compulsion which necessarily operates on all men; and soon connects, with his obedience to duty, a just idea of the importance which that duty involves. Well will it be for him if he long remain with only a master to serve; if he continue the "link-boy" to the end of his "teens," still "loving to learn," not "learning to love." But it may be otherwise. Already legally bound to a master, he may speedily discover that he is becoming incontinently bound to a mistress! Pleasing emotions, painful apprehensions, urgent desires, and jealous thoughts, soon indicate that the articles of love's apprenticeship are far more imperative than those of law or physic. Away go all the small conceits and simple affectations of hobbadihoy-ism. The Promethean fires of Miss Emma's eyes have at once melted the "link;" the "boy" falls back into a thing remembered; the "man," in the lover, stands confessed. My own continuation in the negative condition of "standing water between boy and man," was about a twelvemonth. I do not say that the man, as he first comes forth from the hatching of love's warmth, is of necessity a man matured. That will depend upon his years. It is merely asserted, that the real lover, however young, is already a man in kind; and that the old animal, who really "never lov'd, nor felt fair woman's sigh," is not, nor ever can be, a man of any kind. I was apprenticed to an architect in 1818, very soon after I left school. The first official movements of an architectural student are of two very opposite and not equally delightful kinds. Painters and sculptors have an enviable "one-ness "in their pursuits; but, while the young architect rejoices in studying the Greek and Roman orders, his taste rejects, however his duty obeys, the orders of his master to work upon a measuring-book full of "cross multiplication," as thus,-12' : 8" x 17:3" x9'4" 2039': 4". Drawing out the combined form of pedestal, column, entablature, and balustrade complete, is a task carrying with it its own reward; but the labours of the "specification" and "estimate" are such as only find their reward at a future period, when knowledge brings practice, practice income, and income the means of following up a lover's hopes. I found it ever necessary to bear in mind, that the great Saint-I beg pardon the great Sir Christopher, was a most profound arithmetician. This kept me pretty close even to the drudgery of my studies for about a twelvemonth, when the hazel eyes and auburn hair of Miss E. S. suddenly occasioned such a state of "cross multiplication" in my purposes, such an addition to my sensibilities, such a division of duty, and such a reduction of my "operant powers," that I became a mere conglomerate of opposing quantities, whose resultant value is a cipher. As with the Thane of Cawdor, my novel "state of man" was so shaken, My calculations were as full of fancies as of figures. My estimates partook of a reference to beauty as a thing to be valued at so many sighs per foot superficial, while the heart was priced at so many tears per foot cube. My specifications had a tendency to run into particulars of sundry works to be done and performed in constructing a bower for my lady-love, in fairy-land, in the parish of Lambeth, county of Surrey; and of course my "designs," however openly concurrent with those of my tutor, were covertly prosecuted with views of a much more tender nature. Let me, however-so far as alludes to this, my love's first dreamanticipate the conclusion of two years. I remained, during an absence of that duration, true as the needle to its own magnetic north. The lady, who lived a hundred miles away, departed unconscious of the impression she had made upon me; and, if she subsequently became acquainted with her beauty's mischief, it was not from any communication made avowedly by myself. I did venture on a valentine, in the February of the second year; but its author was not guessed at—or, rather, I should say, its transcriber; for the author was no other than one Will Shakspeare. It was, in fact, a compound of various flowers from the love-walk in the myriad-varied garden of "Fancy's child," and I remember it included the following modest sense of my own unworthiness: "It were all one, That I should love a bright particular star, When my fair one returned, at the end of the second year, on another visit to our mutual friends, I instantly discovered that the " magnetic north," to which my desires had been so religiously pointed for four-andtwenty months, had never been sensible of the slightest sympathy; and moreover that it remained utterly incapable of any reciprocity; a fact which has ever since inclined me to think, that however the needle may be devoted to the pole, the pole cares not a thread's end for the needle. As my fond hopes had never received the slightest encouragement from my captivator, their disappointment left her truth unquestioned; and, as she evinced not the shadow of a pitying regret at the bankruptcy which followed my rash speculation, I bore the disappointment with a composure that was quite self-astonishing. My noviciate as a lover, at all events, was passed. So far as Cupid was concerned, I had served my apprenticeship. My heart might hereafter be subject to deeper experiences, but it had nothing to learn in the way of love's first principles. I could now pity and patronise first sufferers. I quitted the amatory lyrics of Moore for his political satires; the love-tales of Byron for the meditations of "Childe Harold :" above all, I found in Shakspeare the only intense delight which was compatible with my sober condition as a rational being, and with my fully recovered allegiance as a loving disciple of Sir Christopher. Before I proceed with the history of my apprenticeship, it may interest, not less the old than the young reader, to have placed before him a picture of London as I found it, prefaced by a general sketch of what it was some sixty years before. Such, therefore, will be the subject of the next essay. HUNGARY IN 1851, WITH AN EXPERIENCE OF THE AUSTRIAN POLICE. BY CHARLES LORING BRACE. In the course of a long tour in Europe, made partly on foot, in order better to observe the condition and character of the lower classes, I reached Vienna, early in the spring of 1851. If any one had told me, a few years ago, that I should ever enter that city with such pleasure, I could not for a moment have believed him. To foreigners, Vienna has so long been described as the very centre and stronghold of oppression, and of that modern "Inquisition," the police-system, that one hardly expects the very air to be free; yet it must be allowed to an American, and on coming, as I did, from North Germany, Vienna does appear exceedingly pleasant. It is such a satisfaction to get once more into streets whirling with life, to see people excited and in a hurry. The contrast of the busy, merry-looking city, to the antique Prague, or the quiet, intellectual Berlin, is most striking. The common people too, though the mass are evidently very ignorant, on the whole seem happy and busy. One escapes besides, that unvarying, wearisome sight of Berlin-the soldiery; and it is a real pleasure at length to be in crowds, where every third man does not wear a bayonet. The public police are much less numerous than in Prussia, and bad as their profession may be, they are evidently accomplished members of it, and are not betrayed by the stupid, spying look, which marks the Shutzmänner of Berlin. They are very polite too, which can never be said of the Prussian, and what oppression is going on, is evidently being conducted in a very gentlemanly manner. The whole city has a pleasant, friendly physiognomy to the stranger. It is not my purpose, however, in this work, to give any detailed account of my observations of Vienna. I came there with different objects from those of most travellers, and my researches threw me among classes quite apart from those usually seen by the stranger. I am sure that much good must be working even in Austria in such an age as this, and I devoted myself, whilst there, principally to the investigation of those great reforms in education, which I had heard in Prussia were already beginning under the administration of Count Thun. In these investigations, I am bound to say, I was much aided by the polite and friendly attention of many of the principal gentlemen engaged in education in the city, and of some connected with the ministry itself. Indeed every stranger must acknowledge that there is scarcely a population of Europe, among whom he will meet with such a kindly politeness, as among the cultivated classes of Austria. Though somewhat apart from my object, I will give here a brief sketch of these reforms, as showing the good side of Austria, and as presenting movements, of which very little has ever been known in foreign countries. The first great change seems to be, in introducing the Voluntary System into the Universities; or, in other words, the University course is made entirely free to all who enter, and every student can choose his |