THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



Ilia healtli is delicate, and requires care, Init he is a most 

 amiable young man, and of a more intellectual turn of mind 

 than his younger brother. For my own part, I do not know 

 whether or not I exactly like Frank Raby ; I think his father 

 has acted wrong in letting him be so much with Sir John 

 Inkleton, who, we know, although a good-hearted young man, 

 has some strange propensities, and is also very extravagant. 

 I am told he spends a thousand a year amongst coachmen and 

 guards, and I hear that he has made Frank Raby as fond of 

 coach-driving and fox-hunting as he himself is. If Frank 

 were the elder, instead of the younger, brother, all this would 

 not be so material ; but as his chief dependence, to pursue 

 such expensive pleasures, is on his uncle, I wish he may not 

 place it on a broken staff I know Mr. Beaumont Raby well, 

 and surely a person of his high literary attainments, and great 

 personal accomplishments, and living in such good London 

 society, must think very lightly of all such pursuits. I have, 

 indeed, heard him say as much as that he wished both his 

 nephews to distinguish themselves at Oxford, if not to carry 

 honours (which you know was his own case), and then to 

 assume high stations in the senate (which you know was, un- 

 fortunately, not his case, not from want of ability, but from 

 a natural and insuperable indolence) when they make their 

 appearance in the world. As to my valued friend. Lady 

 Charlotte, I am quite sure she is much pained at the accounts 

 she hears of Frank's hunting and riding ; and Andrew told my 

 daughter Jane, the other day, that he has already been in 

 scrapes, connected with them, at Oxford.' 



' All very fine theory of yours, my dear madam,' said the 

 gouty old gentleman, ' but doings and sayings are wide apart. 

 No one knows Beaumont Raby much better than I do, and 

 no one esteems some parts of his character more. All know 

 his literary, as well as his personal, accomplishments to be of 

 the first order ; at the same time, where can we find, in pro- 

 portion to his means, a much more useless member of society ? 

 It is true, he sends his money to Italy, to enrich a country 

 which owns him not as her son, and thereby may be said to 

 encourage the fine arts ; but, with the exception of the benefit 

 arising from the necessary disbursement of liis fine income, 

 what good does he do for his own ? With talents which might 

 have made liim one of the resources of his country, he sits by. 



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