The Disowned | Page 9

from whom Meg had stolen me in the first year of
existence. Whether it was through the fear of conscience or the hope of
reward, no sooner had Meg learnt the dangerous state of my poor
mother, the constant grief, which they said had been the sole though
slow cause of her disease, and the large sums which had been
repeatedly offered for my recovery; no sooner, I say, did Meg ascertain
all these particulars than she fought her way up to the sick-chamber,
fell on her knees before the bed, owned her crime, and produced myself.
Various little proofs of time, place, circumstance; the clothing I had
worn when stolen, and which was still preserved, joined to the striking
likeness I bore to both my parents, especially to my father, silenced all
doubt and incredulity: I was welcomed home with a joy which it is in
vain to describe. My return seemed to recall my mother from the grave;
she lingered on for many months longer than her physicians thought it
possible, and when she died her last words commended me to my
father's protection."
"My surviving parent needed no such request. He lavished upon me all
that superfluity of fondness and food of which those good people who
are resolved to spoil their children are so prodigal. He could not bear
the idea of sending me to school; accordingly he took a tutor for me,--a
simple-hearted, gentle, kind man, who possessed a vast store of
learning rather curious than useful. He was a tolerable, and at least an
enthusiastic antiquarian, a more than tolerable poetaster; and he had a
prodigious budget full of old ballads and songs, which he loved better
to teach and I to learn, than all the 'Latin, Greek, geography, astronomy,
and the use of the globes,' which my poor father had so sedulously
bargained for."

"Accordingly, I became exceedingly well-informed in all the 'precious
conceits' and 'golden garlands' of our British ancients, and continued
exceedingly ignorant of everything else, save and except a few of the
most fashionable novels of the day, and the contents of six lying
volumes of voyages and travels, which flattered both my appetite for
the wonderful and my love of the adventurous. My studies, such as they
were, were not by any means suited to curb or direct the vagrant tastes
my childhood had acquired: on the contrary, the old poets, with their
luxurious description of the 'green wood' and the forest life; the
fashionable novelists, with their spirited accounts of the wanderings of
some fortunate rogue, and the ingenious travellers, with their wild
fables, so dear to the imagination of every boy, only fomented within
me a strong though secret regret at my change of life, and a restless
disgust to the tame home and bounded roamings to which I was
condemned. When I was about seventeen, my father sold his property
(which he had become possessed of in right of my mother), and
transferred the purchase money to the security of the Funds. Shortly
afterwards he died; the bulk of his fortune became mine; the remainder
was settled upon a sister, many years older than myself, whom, in
consequence of her marriage and residence in a remote part of Wales, I
had never yet seen."
"Now, then, I was perfectly free and unfettered; my guardian lived in
Scotland, and left me entirely to the guidance of my tutor, who was
both too simple and too indolent to resist my inclinations. I went to
London, became acquainted with a set of most royal scamps,
frequented the theatres and the taverns, the various resorts which
constitute the gayeties of a blood just above the middle class, and was
one of the noisiest and wildest 'blades' that ever heard the 'chimes by
midnight' and the magistrate's lecture for matins. I was a sort of leader
among the jolly dogs I consorted with."
"My earlier education gave a raciness and nature to my delineations of
'life' which delighted them. But somehow or other I grew wearied of
this sort of existence. About a year after I was of age my fortune was
more than three parts spent; I fell ill with drinking and grew dull with
remorse: need I add that my comrades left me to myself? A fit of the

spleen, especially if accompanied with duns, makes one wofully
misanthropic; so, when I recovered from my illness, I set out on a tour
through Great Britain and France,--alone, and principally on foot. Oh,
the rapture of shaking off the half friends and cold formalities of
society and finding oneself all unfettered, with no companion but
Nature, no guide but youth, and no flatterer but hope!"
"Well, my young friend, I travelled for two years, and saw even in that
short time enough