Newcome should not go to school. Old Mr. Hobson and his brother had been educated at that school of Grey Friars, of which mention has been made in former works: and to Grey Friars Thomas Newcome was accordingly sent, exchanging-O ye Gods! with what delight-the splendour of Clapham for the rough, plentiful fare of the place, blacking his master's shoes with perfect readiness, till he rose in the school, and the time came when he should have a fag of his own; tibbing out and receiving the penalty therefor; bartering a black eye, per bearer, against a bloody nose drawn at sight, with a schoolfellow, and shaking hands the next day; playing at cricket, hockey, prisoners' base, and football, according to the season; and gorging himself and friends with tarts when he had money (and of this he had plenty) to spend. I have seen his name carved upon the Gown Boys' arch; but he was at school long before my time; his son showed me the name when we were boys together, in some year when George the Fourth was king.

The pleasures of this school-life were such to Tommy Newcome, that he did not care to go home for a holiday: and indeed, by insubordination and boisterousness; by playing tricks and breaking windows; by marauding upon the gardener's peaches and the housekeeper's jam; by upsetting his two little brothers in a go-cart (of which wanton and careless injury the Baronet's nose bore marks to his dying day); by going to sleep during the sermons, and treating reverend gentlemen with levity, he drew down on himself the merited wrath of his stepmother; and many punishments in this present life, besides those of a future and much more durable kind, which the good lady did not fail to point out that he must undoubtedly inherit. His father, at Mrs. Newcome's instigation, certainly whipped Tommy for upsetting his little brothers in the go-cart; but upon being pressed to repeat the whipping for some other peccadillo performed soon after, Mr. Newcome refused at once, using a wicked, worldly expression, which might well shock any serious lady: saying, in fact, that he would be d―――d if he beat the boy any more, and that he got flogging enough at school, in which opinion Master Tommy fully coincided.

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The undaunted woman, his stepmother, was not to be made to forego her plans for the boy's reform by any such vulgar ribaldries; and Mr. Newcome being absent in the City on his business, and Tommy refractory as usual, she summoned the serious butler and the black footman (for the lashings of whose brethren she felt an unaffected pity) to operate together in the chastisement of this young criminal. But he dashed so furiously against the butler's shins as to draw blood from his comely limbs, and to cause that serious and overfed menial to limp and suffer for many days after; and, seizing the decanter, he swore he would demolish blacky's ugly face with it:

nay, he threatened to discharge it at Mrs. Newcome's own head before he would submit to the coercion which she desired her agents to administer.

High words took place between Mr. and Mrs. Newcome that night on the gentleman's return home from the City, and on his learning the events of the morning. It is to be feared he made use of further oaths, which hasty ejaculations need not be set down in this place; at any rate, he behaved with spirit and manliness as master of the house, vowed that, if any servant laid a hand on the child, he would thrash him first and then discharge him; and, I daresay, expressed himself with bitterness and regret that he had married a wife who would not be obedient to her husband, and had entered a house of which he was not suffered to be the master. Friends were called in-the interference, the supplications, of the Clapham clergy, some of whom dined constantly at the Hermitage, prevailed to allay this domestic quarrel; and, no doubt, the good sense of Mrs. Newcome who, though imperious, was yet not unkind; and who, excellent as she was, yet could be brought to own that she was sometimes in fault,-induced her to make at least a temporary submission to the man whom she had placed at the head of her house, and whom, it must be confessed, she had vowed to love and honour. When Tommy fell ill of the scarlet fever, which afflicting event occurred presently after the above dispute, his own nurse, Sarah, could not have been more tender, watchful, and affectionate, than his stepmother showed herself to be. She nursed him through his illness: allowed his food and medicine to be administered by no other hand; sat up with the boy through a night of his fever, and uttered not one single reproach to her husband (who watched with her) when the twins took the disease (from which we need not say they happily recovered); and though young Tommy, in his temporary delirium, mistaking her for Nurse Sarah, addressed her as his dear Fat Sally-whereas no whipping-post to which she ever would have tied him could have been leaner than Mrs. Newcome—and, under this feverish delusion, actually abused her to her face, calling her an old cat, an old Methodist; and, jumping up in his little bed, forgetful of his previous fancy, vowed that he would put on his clothes and run away to Sally. Sally was at her northern home by this time, with a liberal pension which Mr. Newcome gave her, and which his son and his'son's son after him, through all their difficulties and distresses, always found means to pay.

What the boy threatened in his delirium he had thought of, no doubt, more than once in his solitary and unhappy holidays. A year after he actually ran away, not from school, but from home; and appeared one morning, gaunt and hungry, at Sarah's cottage, two hundred miles away from Clapham, who housed the poor prodigal,

and killed her calf for him-washed him, with many tears and kisses, and put him to bed and to sleep; from which slumber he was aroused by the appearance of his father, whose sure instinct, backed by Mrs. Newcome's own quick intelligence, had made him at once aware whither the young runaway had fled. The poor father came horsewhip in hand-he knew of no other law or means to maintain his authority; many and many a time had his own father, the old weaver, whose memory he loved and honoured, strapped and beaten him. Seeing this instrument in the parent's hand, as Mr. Newcome thrust. out the weeping trembling Sarah and closed the door upon her,, Tommy, scared out of a sweet sleep and a delightful dream of cricket,. knew his fate; and, getting up out of bed, received his punishment without a word. Very likely the father suffered more than the child; for, when the punishment was over, the little man, yet trembling and quivering with the pain, held out his little bleeding hand and said, I can-I can take it from you, sir;" saying which his face flushed, and his eyes filled, for the first time; whereupon the father burst into a passion of tears, and embraced the boy and kissed him, besought and prayed him to be rebellious no more-flung the whip away from him and swore, come what would, he would never strike him again. The quarrel was the means of a great and happy reconciliation. The three dined together in Sarah's cottage. Perhaps the father would have liked to walk that evening in the lanes and fields where he had wandered as a young fellow: where he had first courted and first kissed the young girl he loved-poor child-who had waited for him so faithfully and fondly, who had passed so many a day of patient want and meek expectance, to be repaid by such a scant holiday and brief fruition.

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Mrs. Newcome never made the slightest allusion to Tom's absence after his return, but was quite gentle and affectionate with him, and that night read the parable of the Prodigal in a very low and quiet voice.

This, however, was only a temporary truce. War very soon broke out again between the impetuous lad and his rigid domineering stepmother. It was not that he was very bad, or she perhaps more stern than other ladies, but the two could not agree. The boy sulked and was miserable at home. He fell to drinking with the grooms in the stables. I think he went to Epsom races, and was discovered after that act of rebellion. Driving from a most interesting breakfast at Roehampton (where a delightful Hebrew convert had spoken, oh! so graciously!) Mrs. Newcome-in her state-carriage, with her bayhorses-met Tom, her stepson, in a tax-cart, excited by drink, and accompanied by all sorts of friends, male and female. John, the black man, was bidden to descend from the carriage and bring him

to Mrs. Newcome. He came; his voice was thick with drink; he laughed wildly; he described a fight at which he had been present. It was not possible that such a castaway as this should continue in a house where her two little cherubs were growing up in innocence and grace.

The boy had a great fancy for India; and "Orme's History," containing the exploits of Clive and Lawrence, was his favourite book of all in his father's library. Being offered a writership, he scouted the idea of a civil appointment, and would be contented with nothing but a uniform. A cavalry cadetship was procured for Thomas New-come; and the young man's future career being thus determined, and his stepmother's unwilling consent procured, Mr. Newcome thought fit to send his son to a tutor for military instruction, and removed him from the London school, where, in truth, he had made but very little progress in the humaner letters. The lad was placed with a professor who prepared young men for the army, and received rather a better professional education than fell to the lot of most young soldiers of his day. He cultivated the mathematics and fortification with more assiduity than he had ever bestowed on Greek and Latin, and especially made such a progress in the French tongue as was very uncommon among the British youth his contemporaries.

In the study of this agreeable language, over which young New-. come spent a great deal of his time, he unluckily had some instructors who were destined to bring the poor lad into yet further trouble at home. His tutor, an easy gentleman, lived at Blackheath, and, not far from thence, on the road to Woolwich, dwelt the little Chevalier de Blois, at whose house the young man much preferred to take his French lessons rather than to receive them under his tutor's own roof.

For the fact was that the little Chevalier de Blois had two pretty young daughters, with whom he had fled from his country along with thousands of French gentlemen at the period of revolution and emigration. He was a cadet of a very ancient family, and his brother, the Marquis de Blois, was a fugitive like himself, but with the army of the princes on the Rhine, or with his exiled sovereign at Mittau. The Chevalier had seen the wars of the great Frederick: what man could be found better to teach young Newcome the French language and the art military? It was surprising with what assiduity he pursued his studies. Mademoiselle Léonore, the Chevalier's daughter, would carry on her little industry very undisturbedly in the same parlour with her father and his pupil. She painted card-racks: laboured at embroidery; was ready to employ her quick little brain or fingers in any way by which she could find means to add a few shillings to the scanty store on which this exiled family supported themselves in their day of misfortune.

I suppose the Chevalier was not in the least

unquiet about her, because she was promised in marriage to the Comte de Florac, also of the emigration, a distinguished officer like the Chevalier, than whom he was a year older, and, at the time of which we speak, engaged in London in giving private lessons on the fiddle, Sometimes, on a Sunday, he would walk to Blackheath with that instrument in his hand, and pay his court to his young fiancée, and talk over happier days with his old companion in arms. Tom New-come took no French lessons on a Sunday. He passed that day at Clapham generally, where, strange to say, he never said a word about Mademoiselle de Blois.

What happens when two young folks of eighteen, handsome and ardent, generous and impetuous, alone in the world, or without strong affections to bind them elsewhere,—what happens when they meet: daily over French dictionaries, embroidery-frames, or, indeed, upon any business whatever? No doubt Mademoiselle Léonore was a young lady perfectly bien élevée, and ready, as every well-elevated young Frenchwoman should be, to accept a husband of her parents' choosing; but, while the elderly M. de Florac was fiddling in London, there was that handsome young Tom Newcome ever present at Blackheath. To make a long matter short, Tom declared his passion, and was for marrying Léonore off-hand, if she would but come with him to the little Catholic chapel at Woolwich. Why should they not go out to India together and be happy ever after?

The innocent little amour may have been several months in transaction, and was discovered by Mrs. Newcome, whose keen spectacles nothing could escape. It chanced that she drove to Blackheath to Tom's tutor. Tom was absent taking his French and drawing lesson of M. de Blois. Thither Tom's stepmother followed him, and found the young man sure enough with his instructor over his books and plans of fortification. Mademoiselle and her card-screens were in the room, but behind those screens she could not hide her blushes and confusion from Mrs. Newcome's sharp glances. In one moment the banker's wife saw the whole affair-the whole mystery which had been passing for months under poor M. de Blois' nose, without his having the least notion of the truth.

Mrs. Newcome said she wanted her son to return home with her upon private affairs; and, before they had reached the Hermitage, a fine battle had ensued between them. His mother had charged him with being a wretch and a monster, and he had replied fiercely, denying the accusation with scorn, and announcing his wish instantly to marry the most virtuous, the most beautiful of her sex. To marry a Papist! This was all that was wanted to make poor Tom's cup of bitterness run over. Mr. Newcome was called in, and the two elders passed a great part of the night in an assault upon the lad. He was