Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/34

 These silver figures were the chef-d'œuvres of the artist: they had cost him years of unwearied labour, and were not even then finished.

After I left Devonshire I was placed at a school in the neighbourhood of London, in which there were about thirty boys.

My first experience was unfortunate, and probably gave an unfavourable turn to my whole career during my residence of three years.

After I had been at school a few weeks, I went with one of my companions into the play-ground in the dusk of the evening. We heard a noise, as of people talking in an orchard at some distance, which belonged to our master. As the orchard had recently been robbed, we thought that thieves were again at work. We accordingly climbed over the boundary wall, ran across the field, and saw in the orchard beyond a couple of fellows evidently running away. We pursued as fast as our legs could carry us, and just got up to the supposed thieves at the ditch on the opposite side of the orchard.

A roar of laughter then greeted us from two of our own companions, who had entered the orchard for the purpose of getting some manure for their flowers out of a rotten mulberry-tree. These boys were aware of our mistake, and had humoured it.

We now returned all together towards the play-ground, when we met our master, who immediately pronounced that we were each fined one shilling for being out of bounds. We two boys who had gone out of bounds to protect our master's property, and who if thieves had really been there would probably have been half-killed by them, attempted to remonstrate and explain the case; but all