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was now seventeen; and, the system of private education having so decidedly failed, it was resolved that he should spend the years antecedent to his going to Oxford, at home. Nothing could be a greater failure than the first weeks of his "course of study!"' He was perpetually violating the sanctity of the drawing-room by the presence of Scapulas and Hederics, and outraging the propriety of morning visitors by bursting into his mother's boudoir, with Lexicons and green slippers.

"Vivian, my dear," said his father to him