"Accordingly, I have become exceedingly well-informed in all the precious conceits' and 'golden garlands "of our British ancients, and continued exceedingly ignorant of every thing 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 afterward he died; the bulk of his fortune became mine; the remainder was settled upon a sister many years older than myself, who, 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 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. O, the rapture of shaking off the half friends and cold formalities of society, and finding one's self 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 of this busy world to weary and disgust me with its ordinary customs. I was not made to be polite, still less to be ambitious. I sighed after the coarse comrades and the free tents of my first associates, and a thousand remembrances of the gipsy wanderings, steeped in all the green and exhilarating colors of childhood, perpetually haunted my mind. On my return from my wanderings, I found a letter from my sister, who, having become a widow, had left Wales, and had now fixed her residence in a well visited watering-place in the west of England. I had never yet seen her, and her letter was a fine lady-like sort of epistle, with a great deal of romance and a very little sense, written in an extremely pretty hand, and ending with a quotation from Pope. (I never could endure Pope, nor indeed any of the poets of the days of Anne and her successors.) It was a beautiful season of the year; I had been inured to pedestrian excursions, so I set off on foot to see my nearest surviving relative. On the way, I fell in (though on a very different spot) with the very encampment you saw last night. By heavens, that was a merry meeting to me; I joined, and journeyed with them for several days,- never do I remember a happier time. Then, after many years of bondage and stiffness, and accordance with the world, I found myself at ease, like a released bird; with what zest did I join in the rude jokes, and the knavish tricks, the stolen feasts and the roofless nights of those careless vagabonds. Ah, sir, may you never,- for the sake of what the world calls honest men, know the happiness of being a rogue! "I left my fellow travellers at the entrance of the town where my sister lived. Now came the contrast. Somewhat hot, rather plebeianishly clad, and covered with the dust of a long summer's day, I was ushered into a little drawing-room, eighteen feet by twelve, as I was afterward somewhat pompously informed. A flaunting carpet, green, red, and yellow, covered the floor. A full length picture of a thin woman, looking most agreeably ill-tempered, stared down at me from the chimney piece; three stuffed birds, how emblematic of domestic life! stood stiff and imprisoned, even after death, in a glass cage. A fire screen, and a bright fireplace; chairs covered with holland, to preserve them from the atmosphere, and long mirrors, wrapped, as to the frame work, in yellow muslin, to keep off the flies, finish the panorama of this watering place mansion. The door opened, silks rustled, voice shrieked Mr. Brother!' and a figure, -à thin figure, the original of the picture over the chimney piece, - rushed in." -a "I can well fancy her joy," said the youth. "You can do no such thing, begging your pardon, sir," resumed King Cole. She had no joy at all:she was exceedingly surprised and disappointed. In spite of my early adventures, I had nothing picturesque or romantic about me at all. I was very thirsty, and I called for beer; I was very tired, and I laid down on the sofa; I wore thick shoes, and small buckles; and my clothes were made God knows where, and were certainly put on God knows how. My sister was miserably ashamed of me: she had not even the manners to disguise it. In a higher rank of life than that which she held, she would have suffered far less mortification; for I fancy great people pay but little real attention to externals. Even if a man of rank is vulgar, it makes no difference in the orbit in which he moves; but your genteel gentlewomen' are so terribly dependent upon what Mrs. Tomkins will say, -so very uneasy about their relations, and the opinion they are held in, and, above all, so made up of appearances and clothes, so undone, if they do not eat, drink, and talk à-la-mode, that I can fancy no shame like that of my poor sister's at having found, and being found with a vulgar brother. "I saw how unwelcome I was, and I did not punish myself by a long visit. With a proud face, but a heart |