justly observed, rather an odd man: built schools for peasants, forgave
poachers, and diminished his farmers' rents; indeed, on account of these
and similar eccentricities, he was thought a fool by some, and a madman
by others. However, he was not quite destitute of natural feeling; for he
paid my father's debts, and established us in the secure enjoyment of our
former splendour. But this piece of generosity, or justice, was done in
the most unhandsome manner; he obtained a promise from my father to
retire from Brookes's, and relinquish the turf; and he prevailed upon my
mother to take an aversion to diamonds, and an indifference to china
monsters.




CHAPTER II.


Tell arts they have no soundness,
But vary by esteeming;
Tell schools they want profoundness,
And stand too much on seeming.
If arts and schools reply,
Give arts and schools the lie.
--The Soul's Errand.

At ten years old I went to Eton. I had been educated till that period by
my mother, who, being distantly related to Lord_____, (who had published
"Hints upon the Culinary Art"), imagined she possessed an hereditary
claim to literary distinction. History was her great forte; for she had
read all the historical romances of the day, and history accordingly I