A Colleague a

Frederick Cleveland was educated at Eton, and at Cambridge; and after having proved, both at the school and the University, that he possessed talents of the first ^b order, he had the courage, in order to perfect them, to immure himself for three years in a German University. It was impossible, therefore, for two minds to have been cultivated on more contrary systems, than those of Frederick Cleveland and Vivian Grey. The systems on which they had been educated were not, however, more discordant than the respective tempers of the pupils. With that of Vivian Grey the reader is now somewhat acquainted. It has been shown that he was one precociously convinced of the necessity of managing mankind ^c by studying their tempers and humouring their weaknesses. Cleveland turned from the Book of Nature with contempt; ^d and although his was a mind of extraordinary acuteness; he was, at three-and-thirty, as ignorant of the workings of the human heart, as when, in the innocence of boyhood, he first reached Eton. The inaptitude of his nature to consult the feelings, or adopt the sentiments of others, was visible in his slightest actions. He was the only man who ever passed three years in Germany, and in a German University, who had never yielded to the magic influence of a Meerschaum; ¹⁸⁸ and the same inflexibility of character which prevented him from smoking in Germany, attracted in Italy the loud contempt of those accomplished creatures – the Anglo-Italians. The Duchess of Derwentwater, who saluted with equal naïveté a Cardinal, or a Captain of banditti, was once almost determined to exclude Mr. Cleveland from her conversazione, because he looked so much like an Englishman; and at 94Florence he was still more unpopular; for he abused Velluti, and pasquinaded his patroness. ^a