THE "GOINGS ON" AT BRAMSBY HALL. 



WE are an irritable family we hate very much; and I am not 

 deficient in the family virtue. At three years old I hated my aunt ; 

 I hated reading the bible backwards ; physic and advice soon after 

 shared my aversion. At school I hated mutton, morning chapel at 

 college, to this day I hate the Dean. Hard eggs I hate, and female 

 Worthies ; captains in the Guards and livery servants ; saints and flir- 

 tation ; charity schools and bazaars. But, " greater than all this, than 

 these, than all," I hate a would-be sentimentalist. That thing of 

 starts and pauses, of strains and raptures, a fellow that sits silent 

 with the men, and sighing with the women, with folded arms in the 

 ball-room, like the figures of Buonaparte at St. Helena, or with out- 

 spread arms in the air, like one of Irving's prophets ; I mean an 

 animal very like the frontispiece of Mr. Montgomery's work on Satan. 



It is now ten years since that I enjoyed the high happiness of gra- 

 tifying my inbred malice against one of this fraternity ; and, amid 

 all the many hatreds of life that have been shooting up like thorns 

 about me, I can look back to that day with an exultation of delight 

 known only to those who have a soul to hate, and power to gratify 

 their hatred. 



If I ever loved any thing it was my uncle ; perhaps because no 

 one else loved him. He was a country 'squire of the genuine brown- 

 stout kind of that class, which the wide spread of cheap books and 

 cheap claret has nearly swept from the halls of their fathers. AH 

 about him was inherited. His house, his port, his dress, his jokes, 

 were all as old as Elizabeth. His ideas ever moved in one unvarying 

 circle, of which the centre was himself; with politics he troubled 

 himself little. The Whigs he hated as his fathers had done before 

 him ; and was perfectly sure that he should be burned alive in his 

 own house if the bigotted bloody Catholics came in. He was chari- 

 table that is, he gave much bone-soup to the poor, though conti- 

 nually complaining of their ingratitude. He slumbered in church 

 every Sunday morning, for the sake of setting a good example to the 

 lower orders ; and made the parson drunk every Sunday evening, to 

 show his respect for the cloth. 



My poor, dear uncle ! for years didst thou jostle on, hateful to thy 

 neighbours, tyrannical to thy dependants, but dear to me, thy re- 

 puted heir. How often have I laughed with thee at anecdotes, which 

 from much use had lost their point ! How have I railed with thee at 

 the insolence of the press, or the audacity of paupers ! How have I 

 drank thy port wine ! Alas ! alas ! even now thou mightest have 

 been holding on thy own old course. Still might the parson have 

 guzzled thy beer ('twas a good beer). The poacher might still have 

 trembled at thy nod ; and thy smiling nephew might still have 

 looked for the inheritance. But a concurrence of mischances, such 

 as the fates keep in store for country 'squires, snapped all thy joys. 

 A long continued frost ruined the hunting ; a wet spring killed all 



