duck-hunts and cock-fights about the countrymixed with the throng at the races—and, though my father did not quite like my occasionally visiting a prize-fight, yet here I also indulged my propensities, excusing myself by the circumstance that illustrious persons and other men of rank did not think it beneath them to witness such exhibitions. My mother wished I would not go to them, as I should get some injury; my uncle protested against them as brutalizing in their tendency; my brother declared they were ungentlemanly; and my father, though, as I have observed, he did not much admire them, argued, that after all that could be said against them, they certainly inspired the national courage, and on that account he should be sorry to see them suppressed.

My chief mental enjoyments were theatricals, always preferring those which most strikingly exhibited gallantry and heroism; and if the day happened to be wet, I sometimes read; but my selection of books was very limited, not extending beyond Don Quixotte, Gil Blas, Smollett's Roderic Random, and Fielding's Tom Jones. The coarser the work the better. The adventures, characters, oaths, and imprecations, in some of these pages, were all well suited to my taste, and not being often corrected, it grew with

my growth, and strengthened with my strength! I also drank in the poison of some of those plays which would now hardly be endured on the stage, but must still complete the theatrical library, and from the Mock Astrologer, the Spanish Friar, the Country Wife, Love for Love, and similar productions, I became early familiar with profanity, gallantry, and other qualifications which I considered formed the gentleman, and which assisted in forming the elements of my character. If the hero of the plot was brave, it gilded all the vices of his character in my estimation, and supplied every deficiency of conscience, integrity, humanity, good manners, and good nature.

My brother Charles was never happy without a book-Milton or Thomson, Young or Hervey, the Spectator or the Tatler supplied him with continual amusement; and among his favourite works of fiction were Brookes's Fool of Quality, Mackenzie's Man of Feeling, and Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. His uncle had so moulded his mind into "the form and pressure" of his own, that his rural walks were always sweetened with botanic pursuits, and if his uncle was with him, his highest gratification was to make a new discovery, or if absent, to bring home a posy of wild flowers. To my father and

self all this seemed tame. My brother's pursuits, coupled with his soft and gentle manners, and his docile demeanour with the ladies, constituted him, in my father's eyes, a sort of " Jerry Sneak," and my highest regard for him estimated him as rather "soft" than wise.

My uncle often moralized on our future destinies in life, and would observe that the formation of our present characters must lay the foundation for our future success and happiness. My father said that he might make what he pleased of Charles, but George should go into the army, where he was sure that he would do honour to his family. In vain did my uncle urge the moral evils of the profession-the hazards to which the life of his son would be exposed-the uncertainty of promotion without high interest, and the dangers into which my high and daring spirit would often carry me among my comrades. "Life," said my father, "is a lottery, and a man must take his chance in all professions. I think with Smollet, that we are all playthings of fortune, and that it depends upon something as insignificant and precarious as the tossing up of a halfpenny, whether a man rises to affluence and honours, or continues to his dying-day struggling with the difficulties and disgraces of life." I know these sentiments were uttered by my fa

ther; they are those of Smollet, and he was an author to whose works he was considerably attached.

My uncle, I remember, admitted that accidental circumstances had much to do with life; but he argued that there were roads to honour and happiness much less dangerous to the health of body and mind than through the army; and that even if calamity came upon us in other ways, we had then the consolation that we had not put ourselves in the way of seeking it; that submission to the will of Heaven would naturally follow and sooth such adversity where it visited us in the path of duty, as "strangers and pilgrims upon earth;" but he could conceive of even the merciful God scarcely looking down with pity upon the rash mortal who ran breathless into ruin, and sought "the bubble reputation at the cannon's mouth."

My father answered such arguments with a good horse-laugh, in which I sometimes so far forgot my respect for my uncle, as to join. He replied, "he had no fear of George, but that he would make his way in life, and he hoped the wheel of fortune would turn in his favour. Charles might remain in quiet life if he pleased; but George had all the incipient signs of a hero, and Fortune always favours the brave."

CHAP. IV.

My uncle and brother having departed, my father began to look out for a suitable preceptor to finish my education. As he had avowed his intention to send me to the army, and had told me that he purposed to purchase an ensigncy as soon as I was fit to take it, it may appear that it was useless for me to attain high qualifications as a classic; but he considered these as constituting part of the gentleman, and having settled his opinion that I was to be, some dignitary of the army, he thought that, save matriculation and attendance at the University, I ought not to be behind a dignitary of the church. My Greek, however, did not go beyond Homer, but I had a tolerable training in the Latin classics. In these my father had examined me during the suspension of my regular studies, and tried my capabilities of reading each author.

He never failed to dwell upon battles, orations to the armies, and the glories of the conquerors. Cæsar and Scipio Africanus were with him great favourites, and when we read of the latter killing twenty thousand Carthagenians at the battle of Zama, while he himself lost but two thousand