civil appointment, and would be contented with nothing but a uniform. A
cavalry cadetship was procured for Thomas Newcome; and the young man's
future career being thus determined, and his stepmother's unwilling
consent procured, Mr. Newcome thought fit to send his son to a tutor for
military instruction, and removed him from the London school, where in
truth he had made but very little progress in the humaner letters. The
lad was placed with a professor who prepared young men for the army, and
received rather a better professional education than fell to the lot of
most young soldiers of his day. He cultivated the mathematics and
fortification with more assiduity than he had ever bestowed on Greek and
Latin, and especially made such a progress in the French tongue as was
very uncommon among the British youth his contemporaries.

In the study of this agreeable language, over which young Newcome spent a
great deal of his time, he unluckily had some instructors who were
destined to bring the poor lad into yet further trouble at home. His
tutor, an easy gentleman, lived at Blackheath, and, not far from thence,
on the road to Woolwich, dwelt the little Chevalier de Blois, at whose
house the young man much preferred to take his French lessons rather than
to receive them under his tutor's own roof.

For the fact was that the little Chevalier de Blois had two pretty young
daughters, with whom he had fled from his country along with thousands of
French gentlemen at the period of revolution and emigration. He was a
cadet of a very ancient family, and his brother, the Marquis de Blois,
was a fugitive like himself, but with the army of the princes on the
Rhine, or with his exiled sovereign at Mittau. The Chevalier had seen the
wars of the great Frederick: what man could be found better to teach
young Newcome the French language and the art military? It was surprising
with what assiduity he pursued his studies. Mademoiselle Leonore, the