When I had reached the age of twelve, I had got to the head of the preparatory school to which I had been sent. And having thus exhausted all the oxygen of learning in that little receiver, my parents looked out for a wider range for my inspirations. During the last two years in which I had been at school, my love for study had returned; but it was a vigorous, wakeful, undreamy love, stimulated by competition, and animated by the practical desire to excel. My father no longer sought to curb my intellectual aspirings. He had too great a reverence for scholarship not to wish me to become a scholar if possible; though he more than once said to me somewhat sadly, "Master books, but do not let them master you. Read to live, not live to read. One slave of the lamp is enough for a household; my servitude must not be a hereditary bondage." My father looked round for a suitable academy; and the fame of Dr Herman's "Philhellenic Institute" came to his ears. Now, this Dr Herman was the son of a German music-master, who had settled in England. He had completed his own education at the university of Bonn; but, finding learning too common a drug in that market to bring the high price at which he valued his own, and having some theories as to political freedom which attached him to England, he resolved upon setting up a school, which he designed as an "era in the history of the human mind." Dr Herman was one of the earliest of those new-fashioned authorities in education, who have, more lately, spread pretty numerously amongst us, and would have given, perhaps, a dangerous shake to the foundations of our great classical seminaries, if those last had not very wisely, though very cautiously, borrowed some of the more sensible principles which lay mixed and adulterated amongst the crotchets and chimeras of their innovating rivals and assailants. Dr Herman had written a great many learned works against every pre-existing method of instruction: that which had made the greatest noise was upon the infamous fiction of Spelling-Books: "A more lying, roundabout, puzzle-headed delusion than that by which we CONFUSE the clear instincts of truth in our accursed systems of spelling, was never concocted by the father of falsehood." Such was the exordium of this famous treatise. "For instance, take the monosyllable Cat. What brazen forehead you must have, when you say to an infant C, A, T,—spell CAT: that is, three sounds, forming a totally opposite compound—opposite in every detail, opposite in the whole—compose a poor little monosyllable, which, if you would but say the simple truth, the child will learn to spell merely by looking at it! How can three sounds, which run thus to the ear, see—eh—tee, compose the sound cat? Don't they rather compose the sound see-eh-tÉ, or I believe that the school did not suffer in reputation from this sad apostacy on the part of the head master; on the contrary, it seemed more natural and English,—less outlandish and heretical. And it was at the zenith of its renown, when, one bright morning, with all my clothes nicely mended, and a large plumcake in my box, I was deposited at its hospitable gates. Amongst Dr Herman's various whimsicalities, there was one to which he had adhered with more fidelity than to the anti-corporeal punishment articles of his creed; and, in fact, it was upon this that he had caused those imposing words, "Philhellenic Institute," to blaze in gilt capitals in front of his academy. He belonged to that illustrious class of scholars who are now waging war on our popular mythologies, and upsetting all the associations which the Etonians and Harrovians connect with the household names of ancient history. In a word, he sought to restore to scholastic purity the mutilated orthography of Greek appellatives. He was extremely indignant that little boys should be brought up to confound Zeus with Jupiter, Ares with Mars, Artemis with Diana—the Greek deities with the Roman; and so rigidly did he inculcate the doctrine that these two sets of personages were to be kept constantly contradistinguished from each other, that his cross-examinations kept us in eternal confusion. "Vat," he would exclaim to some new boy fresh from some grammar-school on the Etonian system—"Vat do you mean by dranslating Zeus The next time I wrote home to my father, modestly implying that I was short of cash, that a trap-bat would be acceptable, and that the favourite goddess amongst the boys (whether Greek or Roman was very immaterial) was Diva Moneta, I felt a glow of classical pride in signing myself, "your affectionate PeÍsistratos." The next post brought a sad damper to my scholastic exultation. The letter ran thus:
Verily, here indeed was the first practical embarrassment produced by that melancholy anachronism which my father had so prophetically deplored. However, nothing like experience to prove the value of compromise in this world! PeÍsistratos continued to write exercises, and a second letter from Pisistratus was followed by the trap-bat. CHAPTER VIII.I was somewhere about sixteen when, on going home for the holidays, I found my mother's brother settled among the household lares. Uncle Jack, as he was familiarly called, was a light-hearted, plausible, Uncle Jack was a great speculator; but in all his speculations he never affected to think of himself,—it was always the good of his fellow-creatures that he had at heart, and in this ungrateful world fellow-creatures are not to be relied upon! On coming of age, he inherited £6000 from his maternal grandfather. It seemed to him then his fellow-creatures were sadly imposed upon by their tailors. Those ninth-parts of humanity notoriously eked out their fractional existence by asking nine times too much for the clothing which civilisation, and perhaps a change of climate, render more necessary to us than to our ancestors the Picts. Out of pure philanthropy, Uncle Jack started "a Grand National Benevolent Clothing Company," which undertook to supply the public with inexpressibles of the best Saxon cloth at 7s. 6d. a pair; coats, superfine, £1, 18s.; and waistcoats at so much per dozen. They were all to be worked off by steam. Thus the rascally tailors were to be put down, humanity clad, and the philanthropists rewarded (but that was a secondary consideration) with a clear return of 30 per cent. In spite of the evident charitableness of this Christian design, and the irrefragable calculations upon which it was based, this company died a victim to the ignorance and unthankfulness of our fellow-creatures. And all that remained of Jack's £6000 was a fifty-fourth share in a small steam-engine, a large assortment of ready-made pantaloons, and the liabilities of the directors. Uncle Jack disappeared, and went on his travels. The same spirit of philanthropy which characterised the speculations of his purse attended the risks of his person. Uncle Jack had a natural leaning towards all distressed communities: if any tribe, race, or nation was down in the world, Uncle Jack threw himself plump into the scale to redress the balance. Poles, Greeks, (the last were then fighting the Turks,) Mexicans, Spaniards,—Uncle Jack thrust his nose into all their squabbles! Heaven forbid I should mock thee, poor Uncle Jack! for those generous predilections towards the unfortunate; only, whenever a nation is in misfortune, there is always a job going on! The Polish cause, the Greek cause, the Mexican cause, and the Spanish cause, are necessarily mixed up with loans and subscriptions. These Continental patriots, when they take up the sword with one hand, generally contrive to thrust the other deep into their neighbours' breeches' pockets. Uncle Jack went to Greece, thence he went to Spain, thence to Mexico. No doubt he was of great service to these afflicted populations, for he came back with unanswerable proof of their gratitude in the shape of £3000. Shortly after this appeared a prospectus of the "New, Grand, National Benevolent Insurance Company, for the Industrious Classes." This invaluable document, after setting forth the immense benefits to society arising from habits of providence, and the introduction of insurance companies—proving the infamous rate of premiums exacted by the existent offices, and their inapplicability to the wants of the honest artisan, and declaring that nothing but the purest intentions of benefiting their fellow-creatures, and raising the moral tone of society, had led the directors to institute a new society, founded on the purest principles and the most moderate calculations—proceeded to demonstrate that twenty-four and a half per cent was the smallest possible return the shareholders could anticipate. The company began under the fairest auspices: an archbishop was caught as president, on the condition always that he should give nothing but his name to the society. Uncle Jack—more euphoniously designated as "the celebrated philanthropist, John Jones Tibbets, Esquire"—was honorary secretary, and the capital stated at two millions. But such was the obtuseness of the industrious classes, so little did they perceive the benefits of subscribing one-and-ninepence a-week from the age of twenty-one to fifty, in order to secure at the latter age the annuity of £18, that the company dissolved into thin air, and with it dissolved also Uncle Jack's £3000. Nothing more was then seen or heard of him for three years. So obscure was his existence, that on the death of an "A vein of the finest coal has been discovered on the estates of the celebrated philanthropist, John Jones Tibbets, Esq. This new mine, the Molly Wheel, having been satisfactorily tested by that eminent engineer, Giles Compass, Esq., promises an inexhaustible field to the energies of the benevolent and the wealth of the capitalist. It is calculated that the best coals may be delivered, screened, at the mouth of the Thames, for 18s. per load, yielding a profit of not less than forty-eight per cent to the shareholders. Shares, £50, to be paid in five instalments. Capital to be subscribed, one million. For shares, early application must be made to Messrs Blunt and Tin, solicitors, Lothbury." Here, then, was something tangible for fellow-creatures to go on—there was land, there was a mine, there was coal, and there actually came shareholders and capital. Uncle Jack was so persuaded that his fortune was now to be made, and had, moreover, so great a desire to share the glory of ruining the monster monopoly of the London wharfs, that he refused a very large offer to dispose of the property altogether, remained chief shareholder, and removed to London, where he set up his carriage, and gave dinners to his fellow-directors. For no less than three years did this company flourish, having submitted the entire direction and working of the mines to that eminent engineer, Giles Compass—twenty per cent was paid regularly by that gentleman to the shareholders, and the shares were at more than cent per cent, when, one bright morning, when least expected, Giles Compass, Esq. removed himself to that wider field for genius like his, the United States; and it was discovered that the mine had for more than a year run itself into a great pit of water, and that Mr Compass had been paying the shareholders out of their own capital. My uncle had the satisfaction this time of being ruined in very good company: three doctors of divinity, two county members, a Scotch lord, and an East India director, were all in the same boat,—that boat which went down with the coal-mine into the great water pit! It was just after this event that Uncle Jack, sanguine and light-hearted as ever, suddenly recollected his sister, Mrs Caxton; and not knowing where else to dine, thought he would repose his limbs under my father's trabes citrea, which the ingenious W. S. Landor opines should be translated "mahogany." You never saw a more charming man than Uncle Jack. All plump people are more popular than thin people. There is something jovial and pleasant in the sight of a round face! What conspiracy could succeed when its head was a lean and hungry-looking fellow, like Cassius? If the Roman patriots had had Uncle Jack amongst them, perhaps they would never have furnished a tragedy to Shakspeare. Uncle Jack was as plump as a partridge—not unwieldy, not corpulent, not obese, not "vastus," which Cicero That Uncle Jack should win my heart was no wonder; my mother's he had always won from her earliest recollection of his having persuaded her to let her great doll (a present from her godmother) be put up to a raffle for the benefit of the chimney-sweeps. "So like him—so good!" she would often say pensively; "they paid sixpence a-piece for the raffle—twenty tickets, and the doll cost £2. Nobody was taken in, and the doll, poor thing, (it had such blue eyes!) went for a quarter of its value. But Jack said nobody could guess what good the ten shillings did to the chimney-sweeps!" Naturally enough, I say, my mother liked Uncle Jack! but my father liked him quite as well, and that was a strong proof of my uncle's powers of captivation. However, it is noticeable that when some retired scholar is once interested in an active man of the world, he is more inclined to admire him than others are. Sympathy with such a companion gratifies Therefore, Uncle Jack was like a book of reference to my father. Verily at times he looked on him as a book, and took him down after dinner as he would a volume of Dodwell or Pausanias. In fact, I believe that scholars who never move from their cells are not the less an eminently curious, bustling, active race, rightly understood. Even as old Burton saith of himself—"Though I live a collegiate student, and lead a monastic life, sequestered from those tumults and troubles of the world, I hear and see what is done abroad, how others run, ride, turmoil and macerate themselves in town and country," which citation sufficeth to show that scholars are naturally the most active men of the world, only that while their heads plot with Augustus, fight with Julius, sail with Columbus, and change the face of the globe with Alexander, Attila, or Mahomet, there is a certain mysterious attraction, which our improved knowledge of mesmerism will doubtless soon explain to the satisfaction of science, between that extremer and antipodal part of the human frame, called in the vulgate "the seat of honour," and the stuffed leather of an armed-chair. Learning somehow or other sinks down to that part in which it was first driven in, and produces therein a leaden heaviness and weight, which counteract those lively emotions of the brain, that might otherwise render students too mercurial and agile for the safety of established order. I leave this conjecture to the consideration of experimentalists in the physics. I was still more delighted than my father with Uncle Jack. He was full of amusing tricks, could conjure wonderfully, make a bunch of keys dance a hornpipe, and if ever you gave him half-a-crown, he was sure to turn it into a halfpenny. He was only unsuccessful in turning my halfpennies into half-crowns. We took long walks together, and in the midst of his most diverting conversation my uncle was always an observer. He would stop to examine the nature of the soil, fill my pockets (not his own) with great lumps of clay, stones, and rubbish, to analyse when he got home, by the help of some chemical apparatus he had borrowed from Mr Squills. He would stand an hour at a cottage door, admiring the little girls who were straw-platting, and then walk into the nearest farm-houses, to suggest the feasibility of "a national straw-plat association." All this fertility of intellect was, alas! wasted in that "ingrata terra" into which Uncle Jack had fallen. No squire could be persuaded into the belief that his mother-stone was pregnant with minerals; no farmer talked into weaving straw-plat into a proprietary association. So, even as an ogre, having devastated the surrounding country, begins to cast a hungry eye on his own little ones, Uncle Jack's mouth, long defrauded of juicier and more legitimate morsels, began to water for a bite of my innocent father. CHAPTER IX.At this time we were living in what may be called a very respectable style for people who made no pretence to ostentation. On the skirts of a large village, stood a square red brick house, about the date of Queen Anne. Upon the top of the house was a balustrade; why, heaven knows—for nobody, except our great tom-cat Ralph, ever walked upon the leads—but so it was, and so it often is in houses from the time of Elizabeth, yea, even to that of Victoria. This balustrade was divided by low piers, on each of which was placed a round ball. The centre of the house With the exception of my mother's dining-room, the principal sitting-rooms—that is, the study, the dining-room, and what was emphatically called the "best drawing-room," which was only occupied on great occasions—looked south. Tall beeches, firs, poplars, and a few oaks, backed the house, and indeed surrounded it on all sides but the south; so that it was well sheltered from the winter cold and the summer heat. Our principal domestic, in dignity and station, was Mrs Primmins, who was waiting gentlewoman, housekeeper, and tyrannical dictatrix of the whole establishment. Two other maids, a gardener, and a footman composed the rest of the serving household. Save a few pasture-fields, which he let, my father was not troubled with land. His income was derived from the interest of about £15,000, partly in the three per cents, partly on mortgage; and what with my mother and Mrs Primmins, this income always yielded "Heus," said my father, stopping short, and lifting his eyes from the Colloquies of Erasmus, "salve multum, jucundissime." Uncle Jack was not much of a scholar, but he knew enough Latin to answer, "Salve tantundem, mi frater." My father smiled approvingly. "I see you comprehend true urbanity, or politeness, as we phrase it. There is an elegance in addressing the husband of your sister as brother. Erasmus commends it in his opening chapter, under the head of 'Salutandi formulÆ.' And indeed," added my father thoughtfully, "there is no great difference between politeness and affection. My author here observes that it is polite to express salutation in certain minor distresses of nature. One should salute a gentleman in yawning, salute him in hiccuping, salute him in sneezing, salute him in coughing;—and that evidently because of your interest in his health; for he may dislocate his jaw in yawning, and the hiccup is often a symptom of grave disorder, and sneezing is perilous to the small blood-vessels of the head, and coughing is either a tracheal, bronchial, pulmonary, or ganglionic affection." "Very true. The Turks always salute in sneezing, and they are a remarkably polite people," said Uncle Jack. "But, my dear brother, I was just looking with admiration at these apple-trees of yours. I never saw finer. I am a great judge of apples. I find, in talking with my sister, that you make very little profit of them. That's a pity. One might establish a cider orchard in this county. You can take your own fields in hand; you can hire more, so as to make the whole, say a hundred acres. You can plant a very extensive apple-orchard on a grand scale. I have just run through the calculations; they are quite startling. Take 40 trees per acre—that's the proper average—at 1s. 6d. per tree; 4000 trees for 100 acres £300;, labour of digging, trenching, say £10 an acre—total for 100 acres, £1000. Pave the bottoms of the holes, to prevent the tap-root striking down into the bad soil—oh, I am very close and careful, you see, in all minutiÆ,!—always was—pave 'em with rubbish and stones, 6d. a hole; that, for 4000 trees the 100 acres is £100. Add the rent of the land, at 30s. an acre, £150. And how stands the total?" Here Uncle Jack proceeded rapidly ticking off the items with his fingers:—
That's your expense. Mark.—Now to the profit. Orchards in Kent realise £100 an acre, some even £150; but let's be moderate, say only £50 an acre, and your gross profit per year, from a capital of £1550, will be £5000.—£5000 a year. Think of that, "Bless me, father," said eagerly the young Pisistratus, who had swallowed with ravished ears every syllable and figure of this inviting calculation, "Why, we should be as rich as Squire Rollick; and then, you know, sir, you could keep a pack of fox-hounds!" "And buy a large library," added Uncle Jack, with more subtle knowledge of human nature as to its appropriate temptations. "There's my friend the archbishop's collection to be sold." Slowly recovering his breath, my father gently turned his eyes from one to the other; and then, laying his left hand on my head, while with the right he held up Erasmus rebukingly to Uncle Jack, he said— "See how easily you can sow covetousness and avidity in the youthful mind! Ah, brother!" "You are too severe, sir. See how the dear boy hangs his head! Fie!—natural enthusiasm of his years—'gay hope by fancy fed,' as the poet says. Why, for that fine boy's sake, you ought not to lose so certain an occasion of wealth, I may say, untold. For, observe, you will form a nursery of crabs; each year you go on grafting and enlarging your plantation, renting, nay, why not buying, more land? Gad, sir! in twenty years you might cover half the county; but say you stop short at 2000 acres, why, the net profit is £90,000 a-year. A duke's income—a duke's—and going a begging as I may say." "But stop," said I modestly; "the trees don't grow in a year. I know when our last apple tree was planted—it is five years ago—it was then three years old, and it only bore one half bushel last autumn." "What an intelligent lad it is!—Good head there. Oh, he'll do credit to his great fortune, brother," said Uncle Jack approvingly. "True, my boy. But in the meanwhile we could fill the ground, as they do in Kent, with gooseberries and currants, or onions and cabbages. Nevertheless, considering we are not great capitalists, I am afraid we must give up a share of our profits to diminish our outlay. So, harkye, Pisistratus—(look at him, brother—simple as he stands there, I think he's born with a silver spoon in his mouth)—harkye, now to the mysteries of speculation. Your father shall quietly buy the land, and then, presto! we will issue a prospectus, and start a company. Associations can wait five years for a return. Every year, meanwhile, increases the value of the shares. Your father takes, we say, fifty shares at £50 each, paying only an instalment of £2 a share. He sells 35 shares at cent per cent. He keeps the remaining 15, and his fortune's made all the same; only it's not quite so large as if he had kept the whole concern in his own hands. What say you now, brother Caxton? 'Visne edere pomum?' as we used to say at school." "I don't want a shilling more than I have got," said my father, resolutely. "My wife would not love me better; my food would not nourish me more; my boy would not, in all probability, be half so hardy, or a tenth part so industrious; and——" "But," interrupted Uncle Jack, pertinaciously, and reserving his grand argument for the last, "the good you would confer on the community—the progress given to the natural productions of your country, the wholesome beverage of cider, brought within cheap reach of the labouring classes. If it was only for your sake, should I have urged this question? should I now? is it in my character? But for the sake of the public! mankind! of our fellow-creatures! Why, sir, England could not get on if gentlemen like you had not a little philanthropy and speculation." "PapÆ!" exclaimed my father, "to think that England can't get on without turning Augustine Caxton into an apple-merchant! My dear Jack, listen. You remind me of a colloquy in this book; wait a bit—here it is—Pamphagus and Cocles—'Cocles recognises his friend who had been absent for many years, by his eminent and remarkable nose.—Pamphagus says, rather irritably, that he is not ashamed of his nose. 'Ashamed of it! no, indeed,' says Cocles: 'I never saw a nose that could be put to so many uses!' 'Ha,' says Pamphagus, Uncle Jack looked a little discomposed for a moment; but he then laughed with his usual heartiness, and saw that he had not yet got to my father's blind side. I confess that my revered parent rose in my estimation after that conference; and I began to see that a man may not be quite without common-sense, though he is a scholar. Indeed, whether it was that Uncle Jack's visit acted as a gentle stimulant to his relaxed faculties, or that I, now grown older and wiser, began to see his character more clearly, I date from those summer holidays the commencement of that familiar and endearing intimacy which ever after existed between my father and myself. Often I deserted the more extensive rambles of Uncle Jack, or the greater allurements of a cricket match in the village, or a day's fishing in Squire Rollick's preserves, for a quiet stroll with my father by the old peach wall;—sometimes silent, indeed, and already musing over the future, while he was busy with the past, but amply rewarded when, suspending his lecture, he would pour forth hoards of varied learning, rendered amusing by his quaint comments, and that Socratic satire which only fell short of wit because it never passed into malice. At some moments, indeed, the vein ran into eloquence; and with some fine heroic sentiment in his old books, his stooping form rose erect, his eye flashed; and you saw that he had not been originally formed and wholly meant for the obscure seclusion in which his harmless days now wore contentedly away. CHAPTER IX."Egad, sir, the county is going to the dogs! Our sentiments are not represented in parliament or out of it. The County Mercury has ratted, and be hanged to it! and now we have not one newspaper in the whole shire to express the sentiments of the respectable part of the community!" This speech was made on the occasion of one of the rare dinners given by Mr and Mrs Caxton to the grandees of the neighbourhood, and uttered by no less a person than Squire Rollick, of Rollick Hall, chairman of the quarter sessions. I confess that I, (for I was permitted on that first occasion not only to dine with the guests, but to outstay the ladies, in virtue of my growing years, and my promise to abstain from the decanters)—I confess, I say, that I, poor innocent, was puzzled to conjecture what sudden interest in the county newspaper could cause Uncle Jack to prick up his ears like a warhorse at the sound of the drum, and rush so incontinently across the interval between Squire Rollick and himself. But the mind of that deep and truly knowing man was not to be plumbed by a chit of my age. You could not fish for the shy salmon in that pool with a crooked pin and a bobbin, as you would for minnows; or, to indulge in a more worthy illustration, you could not say of him, as St Gregory saith of the streams of Jordan, "a lamb could wade easily through that ford." "Not a county newspaper to advocate the rights of—" here my uncle stopped, as if at a loss, and whispered in my ear, "What are his politics?" "Don't know," answered I. Uncle Jack intuitively took down from his memory the phrase most readily at hand, and added, with a nasal intonation, My father scratched his eyebrow with his forefinger, as he was apt to do when doubtful; the rest of the company—a silent set—looked up. "Fellow-creatures!" said Mr Rollick—"fellow-fiddlesticks!" Uncle Jack was clearly in the wrong box. He drew out of it cautiously—"I mean," said he, "our respectable fellow-creatures;" and then suddenly it occurred to him that a "County Mercury" would naturally represent the agricultural interest, and that if Mr Rollick said that the "County Mercury ought to be hanged," he was one of those politicians who had already begun to call the agricultural interest "a Vampire." Flushed with that fancied discovery, Uncle Jack rushed on, intending to bear along with the stream, thus fortunately directed, all the "rubbish" "Yes, respectable fellow-creatures, men of capital and enterprise! For what are these country squires compared to our wealthy merchants? What is this agricultural interest that professes to be the prop of the land?" "Professes!" cried Squire Rollick, "It is the prop of the land, and as for those manufacturing fellows who have bought up the Mercury—" "Bought up the Mercury, have they, the villains!" cried Uncle Jack, interrupting the Squire, and now bursting into full scent—"Depend upon it, sir, it is a part of a diabolical system of buying up, which must be exposed manfully.—Yes, as I was saying, what is that agricultural interest which they desire to ruin? which they declare to be so bloated—which they call 'a vampire!' they the true blood-suckers, the venomous millocrats! Fellow-creatures, sir! I may well call distressed fellow-creatures, the members of that much suffering class of which you yourself are an ornament. What can be more deserving of our best efforts for relief, than a country gentleman like yourself, we'll say—of a nominal £5000 a-year—compelled to keep up an establishment, pay for his fox-hounds, support the whole population by contributions to the poor rates, support the whole church by tithes; all justice, jails, and prosecutions by the county rates, all thoroughfares by the highway rates—ground down by mortgages, Jews, or jointures; having to provide for younger children; enormous expenses for cutting his woods, manuring his model farm, and fattening huge oxen till every pound of flesh costs him five pounds sterling in oil-cake; and then the lawsuits necessary to protect his rights; plundered on all hands by poachers, sheep-stealers, dog-stealers, church-wardens, overseers, gardeners, gamekeepers, and that necessary rascal, his steward. If ever there was a distressed fellow-creature in the world, it is a country gentleman with a great estate." My father evidently thought this an exquisite piece of banter; for by the corner of his mouth I saw that he chuckled inly. Squire Rollick, who had interrupted the speech by sundry approving exclamations, particularly at the mention of poor rates, tithes, county rates, mortgages, and poachers, here pushed the bottle to Uncle Jack, and said civilly—"There's a great deal of truth in what you say, Mr Tibbets. The agricultural interest is going to ruin; and when it does, I would not give that for Old England!" and Mr Rollick snapped his finger and thumb. "But what is to be done—done for the county? There's the rub." "I was just coming to that," quoth Uncle Jack. "You say that you have not a county paper that upholds your cause, and denounces your enemies." "Not since the Whigs bought the ——shire Mercury." "Why, good heavens! Mr Rollick, how could you suppose that you will have justice done you, if at this time of day you neglect the press? The press, sir—there it is—air we breathe! What you want is a great national—no, not a national—A PROVINCIAL proprietary weekly journal, supported liberally and steadily by that mighty party whose very existence is at stake. Without such a paper, you are gone, you are dead, extinct, defunct, buried alive; with such a paper, well conducted, well edited by a man of the world, of "Egad, sir, you are right!" said Mr Rollick, slapping his thigh; "and I'll ride over to our Lord-Lieutenant to-morrow. His eldest son ought to carry the county." "And he will, if you encourage the press, and set up a journal," said Uncle Jack, rubbing his hands, and then gently stretching them out, and drawing them gradually together, as if he were already enclosing in that airy circle the unsuspecting guineas of the unborn association. All happiness dwells more in the hope than the possession; and at that moment, I dare be sworn that Uncle Jack felt a livelier rapture, circum prÆcordia, warming his entrails, and diffusing throughout his whole frame of five feet eight the prophetic glow of the Magna Diva Moneta, than if he had enjoyed for ten years the actual possession of King Croesus's privy purse. "I thought Uncle Jack was not a Tory," said I to my father the next day. My father, who cared nothing for politics, opened his eyes. "Are you a Tory or a Whig, papa?" "Um," said my father—"there's a great deal to be said on both sides of the question. You see, my boy, that Mrs Primmins has a great many moulds for our butter-pats; sometimes they come up with a crown on them, sometimes with the more popular impress of a cow. It is all very well for those who dish up the butter to print it according to their taste, or in proof of their abilities; it is enough for us to butter our bread, say grace, and pay for the dairy. Do you understand?" "Not a bit, sir." "Your namesake Pisistratus was wiser than you, then," said my father. "And now let us feed the duck. Where's your uncle?" "He has borrowed Mr Squills's mare, sir, and gone with Squire Rollick to the great lord they were talking of." "Oho!" said my father, "brother Jack is going to print his butter!" And indeed Uncle Jack played his cards so well on this occasion, and set before the Lord-Lieutenant, with whom he had a personal interview, so fine a prospectus, and so nice a calculation, that before my holidays were over, he was installed in a very handsome office in the county town, with private apartments over it, and a salary of £500 a-year—for advocating the cause of his distressed fellow-creatures, including noblemen, squires, yeomanry, farmers, and all yearly subscribers in the New Proprietary Agricultural, Anti-innovating ——shire Weekly Gazette. At the head of his newspaper Uncle Jack caused to be engraved a crown supported by a flail and a crook, with the motto "Pro rege et grege," and that was the way in which Uncle Jack printed his pats of butter. CHAPTER X.I seemed to myself to have made a leap in life when I returned to school. I no longer felt as a boy. Uncle Jack, out of his own purse, had presented me with my first pair of Wellington boots; my mother had been coaxed into allowing me a small tail to jackets hitherto tailless; my collars, which had been wont, spaniel-like, to flap and fall about my neck, now, terrier-wise, stood erect and rampant, encompassed with a circumvallation of whalebone, buckram, and black silk. I was, in truth, nearly seventeen, and I gave myself the airs of a man. Now be it observed, that that crisis in adolescent existence wherein we first pass from Master Sisty into Mr Pisistratus, or Pisistratus Caxton, Esq.—wherein we arrogate, and with tacit concession from our elders, the long envied title of "young man"—always seems a sudden and imprompt up-shooting and elevation. We do not mark the gradual preparations thereto; we remember only one distinct period in which all the signs and symptoms burst and effervesced together;—Wellington boots, tail, stiffener, down on the upper lip, thoughts on razors, I began now to read steadily, to understand what I did read, and to cast some anxious looks towards the future, with vague notions that I had a place to win in the world, and that nothing is to be won without perseverance and labour; and so I went on till I was seventeen, and at the head of the school, when I received the two letters I subjoin. 1.—From Augustine Caxton, Esq.
2.—From Mrs Caxton.
The interval between these letters and the morning on which I was to return home, seemed to me like one of those long, restless, yet half dreamy days which in some infant malady I had passed in a sick-bed. I went through my task-work mechanically, composed a Greek ode in farewell to the Philhellenic, which Dr Herman pronounced a chef-d'oeuvre, and my father, to whom I sent it in triumph, returned a letter of false English with it, that parodied all my Hellenic barbarisms by imitating them in my mother tongue. However, I swallowed the leek, and consoled myself with the pleasing recollection that, after spending six years in learning to write bad Greek, I should never have any further occasion to avail myself of so precious an accomplishment. And so came the last day. Then, alone, and in a kind of delighted melancholy, I revisited each of the old haunts. The robbers' cave we had dug one winter, and maintained, six of us, against all the police of the little kingdom. The place near the pales where I had fought my first battle. The old beech stump on which I sate to read letters from home! With my knife, rich in six blades, (besides a cork-screw, a pen-picker, and a button-hook,) I carved my name in large capitals over my desk. Then night came, and the bell rang, and we went to our rooms. And I opened the window and looked out. I saw all the stars, and wondered which was mine—which should light to fame and fortune the manhood about to commence. Hope and Ambition were high within me;—and yet, behind them, stood Melancholy. Ah! who amongst you, readers, can now summon back all those thoughts, sweet and sad—all that untold, half-conscious regret for the past—all those vague longings for the future, which made a poet of the dullest amongst you on the last night before leaving boyhood and school for ever! |