with the most splendid satisfactions of paternal
pride!

At a very early period, young Peel gave reason
for the belief that his father's ambition and confidence
would not be deceived. During the whole course of
his education, at Harrow School and at the University
of Oxford, his labours and successes led men to pre-
dict for him a brilliant destiny.' Peel, the orator
and statesman, says Lord Byron in his Memoirs, 'was
my form-fellow; we were on good terms, but his
brother was my intimate friend. There were always
great hopes of Peel amongst us all, masters and
scholars, and he has not disappointed them. As a
scholar, he was greatly my superior; as a declaimer
and actor, I was reckoned at least his equal. As a
schoolboy, out of school, I was always in scrapes,
and he never. In school, he always knew his lesson,
and I rarely; but when I knew it, I knew it nearly
as well. In general information, history, &c., I think
I was his superior, as well as of most boys of my
standing.' At the University of Oxford, where he
took his degree, young Peel obtained what was then
an almost unexampled honour, -- he was in the first
class in mathematics as well as in classics. As soon
as he left the University, his father, who did not wish
to lose a day of the future to which he aspired for
him, secured the vacant seat for the borough of Cashel
in Ireland; and in 1809, when he was just twenty-
one years of age, Robert Peel entered the House of
Commons.

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