THE STAFF OFFICER; OR, THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE. CHAPTER I. "I ran it through, Even from my boyish days!" A MAN'S actions during the first years of his life are so little dependent on himself, that he can neither claim much merit for any virtue they exhibit, nor incur great blame for their folly. The good and the evil of our childhood properly belong to the parent or guardian whose authority we are bound to respect, and whose example we are taught to imitate. From my fifth year to the age of eight, I was doomed to endure the horrors of a preparatory school, kept by a prim old maid, under the discipline of whose thimble finger my head smarted ten times a day for alleged stupidity. But at that joyous stage of life, being released from the petticoat, I was entered on the roll of junior boys at a large academy near Trinity College, Dublin, where my two senior brothers had already been established upwards of two years. The elder was from my earliest recollections an eccentric boy, reserved even to bashfulness in manner; cold, formal, and pedantic in address; embarrassed, if not awkward, in carriage: although with a personal appearance every way prepossessing, he seldom made his way in company; tormented with morbid sensitiveness of feeling, which formed the great drawback on his youthful pleasures, he was perpetually fancying some slight or neglect, where none was ever contemplated; his noble sense of justice in all his school-boy transactions, his inflexible fidelity to truth, even under the terrors of that punishment which was ever sure to follow the avowal of any act of insubordination or misconduct, had much endeared him to the regard of our worthy master, whose feelings were oftentimes placed in painful conflict with his duty. But having one hundred of us to control, the benevolent wishes of the kindest and best of hearts were forced to yield to stern duty. Excellent man! how well do I recollect his pompous strut across the brief court-yard which separated the school-room from his house of residence, and the audible hawks! and hems! with which he never failed to give tidings of his approach. The boisterous noise of five score tongues, and twice as many hands, was in an instant subdued into broken murmurs, and before his well-powdered head displayed its snowy honours in the school-room, all was mute, save the soft hum of affected application to the lessons of the morning. With buckles bright as his own imagination-shoes like polished ebony-broad-striped silk stockings, (erst called patent,) with toes most gracefully pointed, in measured pace he moved on towards his throne, kindly returning those respectful salutations which the senior boys, spite of their flushed and moistened brows, and still panting breasts, presumed to bestow. Our master was of commanding figure and fine countenance— an excellent scholar-tolerably fair poet-inveterate punstera walking dictionary of classical quotations; and, better than all these, a kind, an honest, and a religious man! In the front rank of riot and rebellion, my second brother was ever to be found: on every outrage or disorder in the school, the finger of suspicion usually pointed at him; he was at once a dangerous and agreeable associate for the companions of his form. His passion for disputation was so strong, that he frequently got up charges against himself for the eclat of making his bold and ingenious defence; for, to the honour of our worthy master, he never punished without hearing all that could be urged in refutation of an alleged offence, or in palliation of an admitted one; and when he found a defence exhibit signs of genius, the mildness of the chastisement, and the readiness with which his ear caught the cry of pardon, sir, pardon! from sympathizing class-fellows, proved at once the goodness of heart, and the pride of the master. This brother was destined for the bar-he remained but one year at school after my entrance, and had he not been removed by our parents, the necessity of ridding the establishment of such an unruly mem ber would have compelled the principal to risk their friendship by soliciting his removal. Volatile and capricious by nature, overbearing from long habits of indulgence, and, occasionally, tyrannical, the boy felt the mildest discipline as an intolerable restraint; and being perniciously indulged with unlimited pocket-money by a doating mother, he bought boys' golden opinions instead of earning them. Poor fellow! he terminated his earthly career at the age of four-and-twenty! the victim of that premature debility which precocity in every species of debauch and dissipation engenders. As for myself, I was any thing but the sheepish pedant my elder brother appeared-I had more of the milk of human kindness in me than the other. With not one quarter of the solid talents of the former, (who remained at our school,) I was extolled as a prodigy of early capacity, and eternally thrown in his teeth as obtaining the start of him: this false elevation gave me pain, for I was conscious how little I deserved it. The faculty of memory was in me so powerful, that, on a single reading, the remembrance of a whole chapter became an easy task: added to this, I wrote at the age of ten a beautiful hand, and as quick as thought; so that when others were toiling over the fair copy of their exercises for the morning, mine were already finished, and under the inspection of the first usher; I was a hare amongst the tortoises-and no more: they all beat me in the long run! Bold and loquacious abroad, I was at home all diffidence and modesty; not from hypocrisy, for that vice I ever did and ever shall despise; but there I was borne down and subdued by my imperious_second brother, who made me his fag; in return, however, I was allowed to ride his pony every evening, and to figure away each Thursday and Saturday at our dancing academy, in his cast-off dress-pumps, and a pair of repudiated silk stockings. My eldest brother, an eccentric by nature, vibrating in his choice of professions between the pulpit and the bar, determined in externals to imitate the gravity of both, and invariably appeared on our dancing evenings in a suit of sables; the solemnity of his smile when soliciting the hand of the daughter of some man of figs or tallow for the dance, was truly awful; it was (as Curran, I believe, once observed in a similar case) like the platings on a coffin! while his intended compliments were so elaborately pedantic, as to be wholly misunderstood by those to whom they were addressed. : He, too, was bred to the law, but the law was not bread to him he chose the humbler rank of the profession; but he was too kind-hearted, too much the slave of truth, honour, and good feeling, ever to prosper in a line of life, in which (with reverence be it said to the few who adorn that, as they undoubtedly would any other profession) the absence of all these qualities proves the most certain road to wealth and success. Up to the commencement of my thirteenth year, I had never been separated from my family. During the summer season, we usually passed three or four months at Lucan, a delightful village within seven miles of Dublin, and nearly adjoining the romantic Leixlip, celebrated for its various beauties in that ancient ditty: "Though Leixlip is proud of its close shady bowers, At this place my mother had established a kind of draw-farm, where (although an eternal complainant of the infidelity and inconstancy of her spouse) she contrived to rear ten out of nineteen children, which she had borne him! My father almost every year passed a month or six weeks in the south of Ireland, of which province he was a native, and in a lovely and far-famed portion of which his family, at some early period of the national history, must have held no inconsiderable rank, to judge from the circumstance that a town (which yet presents the remains of ancient grandeur) derives its name from being the burial place of the clan, and that it to this hour presents the spectacle of two immense piles of skulls, which, when again imbodied, will present an army of many thousand sinners! He also made occasional trips to England, on one of which I was allowed to draw lots with my second brother for the chance of accompanying him. Whether for future good or evil, the luck, as I then deemed it, was mine, and in the summer of 1790, I left home for the first time, contemplating with a throbbing heart the various scenes and changes through which I was destined to pass in the course of my journey. My wardrobe was considerably enlarged for the occasion. Amongst other finery, I found a blue coat with orange-velvet cuffs and collar, and gilt buttons, which were impressed with the equestrian figure of William III.-the inscription 1st July, 1690, beneath. Little did I then know the nature of the badge I so proudly wore; but it was my first and last appearance in the character of an ORANGE-MAN! The reasons for this masquerade were as follow: Our route for England was to be pursued by the way of the north of Ireland and Scotland; and my father determined to indulge me with a sight of the grand raree-show, which all the good and loyal protestants of the north had for the previous six months been engaged in getting up, to celebrate the centenary of the battle of the Boyne! The uniform fixed on by the Orange committee for the occasion was that which I have described: those, however, who were to take a distinguished part in the processions, wore, besides the orange-cuffs and collar, silken scarfs and knee-bands of their much beloved colour. I observed, that while my father dressed me up for this grand display in the costume of assumed loyalty, he did not wear the uniform himself, but appeared in the regimentals of the volunteer corps, the Dublin Liberty Rangers, of which he was a member; it was scarlet with facings of green; thus indulging his irradicable love for the colour of the land of his birth, without appearing in the least degree to slight the ceremony, or compromise his loyal feelings! |