MEMOIR OF A GENTLEMAN. 



" I was an only child, and from the cradle evinced an 

 indolent and dreamy temperature, which was ill adapted to 

 withstand the worry of trade, and all the annoyances entailed 

 on traffic. I hated trouble ; hardly knew the difference 

 between pearl-ashes and pearl-barley ; could never com- 

 prehend tare-and-trett, and had, moreover, literary pro- 

 pensities. How one in whose veins the blood of the Daw- 

 kinses circulated, could be so deplorably uncommercial, is 

 a puzzle ; but I was, I suppose, ' foredoomed my father's 

 soul to cross/ and an unhappy tutor ruined me beyond 

 recovery. 



"My Gamaliel was a Scotch gentleman of unblemished 

 lineage, remarkable for soiled linen and classical research, 

 who had emigrated from a highland valley with an unpro- 

 nounceable name, to hold a secondary situation in a city 

 academy, where the progeny of Love-lane and Little Britain 

 received the rudiments of polite letters. The extra hours of 

 the gifted Celt were, for the consideration of ten pounds' 

 annual fee, ' to be paid quarterly, and in advance/ devoted 

 to my accomplishments. Never had man more profound 

 contempt for trade and traders than he at whose feet I was 

 indoctrinated. He turned his nose up at the wealthiest grocer 

 in the ward ; and was barely civil to a tobacconist who had 

 a villa at Pentonville, and was, moreover, first favourite for 

 an aldermanic gown. Such delinquency could not be over- 

 looked, and for his heretical opinions touching commerce., 

 he was eventually ejected from Tooley-street. But, alas ! 

 the mischief was done the seed was already sown and, as 

 after-experience proved, none of it had fallen upon the way- 

 side. 



" ' In brevity I shall emulate the noble Roman/ quoth 

 Jack Falstaif ; and so shall I, so far as the autobiography of 

 my youth is concerned. I abominated business was an 

 admirer of the Corsair and Lallah Rookh was generally given 

 to inflammatory poetry wrote fugitive pieces, and vainly en- 

 deavoured to get them a corner in the periodicals quarrelled 

 with my parents was supported in my rebellion by a ro- 

 mantic aunt and when my disinheritance was actually in 

 legal train, was saved by my parents quitting this world of 

 care, which they did within one short month, by the agency 

 of a typhus fever and two physicians. 



" Thus was I thrown upon the world at two-and-twenty, 



