After a year's probation at a school near Clapham-common, kept by a superior sort of Wackford Squeers, who taught his pupils caligraphy by pounding away at their knuckles with an ebony ruler, I was sent to one of those “classical and commercial academies,” to the usually incompetent principals of which the intellectual development of boys belonging to the middle-classes was at this period confided. The Clapham pedagogue was a great stickler for corporal punishment in the case of small boys, and to the administration of this the shell suits then worn lent themselves admirably. Little boys in these days were dressed up to look the greatest of guys. They had no natty knickerbocker, Balmoral, reefer, or other nice suits to set them off. From petticoats they were shifted into trowsers, fastening to jackets with many buttons, while a huge white frill encircled the neck; and this, which was a supreme moment in a boy's existence, was called being breeched.

My new school was situated at Chislehurst, then undiscovered by the madding crowd of holiday excursionists and undreamt of by the speculative builder, and remarkable for its sequestered rural and sylvan beauty. At the time I am speaking of (1831), the place was as secluded as though it were a hundred miles away from the metropolis. Gates's coach—rattling across the breezy commons, or scudding along the shady lanes, forcing the droning waggoner to pull his creeping team aside—passed daily through the quiet village on its way from Orpington to London.