But now it was that I was bidding farewell to Eton—an eternal farewell! now it was that I felt
"How dear the schoolboy spot,
We ne'er forget, though there we are forgot."
I had been an Etonian for ten lovely years, and—what had I acquired?
I had, in due routine, become captain of the Oppidans—could, on an emergency, translate the dead languages—had worked myself into the eleven of cricket and of foot-ball, and now came forth from Keate's chamber, destined to learn that "the recollections of past happiness are the wrinkles of the soul."