The idea of death had never ceased to occupy my mind and excite my curiosity since I had been told that my father was dead; and I instantly cried out, "Is he dead? Oh, let me look at him--let me look at him!" The sound of my childish voice uttering such an exclamation caught the attention of those around, and whether they believed that I might be related to the dead person, or were actuated merely by a sudden impulse, I cannot tell, but they made way instantly, and letting me into the circle, stood round with a part of their attention now withdrawn from the former object of their contemplations to myself, as I stood habited in deep mourning, gazing upon the body, with all the simplicity, but more than the feelings, of childhood. The dead man was dressed like a respectable tradesman, and had, I suppose, fallen down in a fit of apoplexy; but there he lay with his jaw dropping upon his throat, his glassy eyes wide open, and his limbs stretched out in all the rigidity of death. People may say what they please on the similarity of sleep and death, but, even to a child, the awful difference of the two was so conspicuous, that it seemed to freeze the blood in my young heart, and I never asked what death is again.
My brother was destined for the navy, and my father had fancied that his family interest was sufficiently good to obtain for me the post of attaché to some embassy, by which means he hoped that I might be enabled to make my way in the diplomatic world. Four hundred a-year, three on my reaching one-and-twenty, and one hundred in reversion, after my mother's death, he had calculated would be sufficient to procure me the proper education for that mode of life to which I was destined, and to support me during the toils and privations of the probationary state of unpaid attachéship. The rest of his fortune, sooner or later, was willed to my brother; and, joined to my mother in our guardianship and the execution of his will, was his banker and old friend, Mr. Somers, of whom I shall have to speak much more hereafter. Within a year after my father's death my brother went to sea, and I was sent to school, in order to gain so much Latin and Greek as are needful to an attaché, but with especial injunctions to my master to bestow far more attention upon the living than upon the dead languages. I was at this time a gay and lively boy, full of fun, daring, and impudence, but with what neither I nor any one else suspected, namely, a wild and ungovernable imagination, which was constantly leading me into scrapes during my youth, and which has been, by turns, my bane and my consolation since I reached the days of manhood. The French master at the school was an emigrant and a gentleman, both by birth and habits; and as the instructions which he had to bestow upon me were more extended than those which he was called on to give the rest of the boys, it very naturally happened, that a closer intimacy and regard took place between us than existed between himself and the others. I liked his language, too, and his manners; and soon finding out that my imagination was of a very irritable nature, he kindly, but perhaps injudiciously, supplied it with plenty of food, either by telling me tales of the wars of La Vendée, or by lending me books which he received from a circulating library to which he subscribed. Although French notions of delicacy and morality are very different from our own, it is but fair to say, that in every other respect but that of furnishing excitement to a fancy already too excitable, he showed much care and prudence in the books which he selected for me. Poetry he gave me abundantly, both French and English, but it was of the best kind, and with books of travels he also supplied me, which sometimes certainly raised my curiosity on points that might as well have been left to elucidate themselves, but which had no tendency to weaken my mind or corrupt my morals. I was idle enough, certainly, but I was tolerably quick in intellect, and consequently contrived to please all the different masters in a certain degree, though those I liked best were certain both to command more of my attention and respect than the others.
At the end of six months I returned home for the holidays, and, on the very first interrogation in reference to my progress at school, established, to my mother's full satisfaction, the fact of my being a miracle of genius and application. Mr. Somers, the banker, had come down himself to bring me home in his carriage, and after leaving me some hours with my mother he returned to dine, bringing with him his little daughter as a playfellow for me. He was a kind good-hearted man; and, after asking we several questions, to satisfy himself that I had not misused my time, he also declared himself perfectly satisfied. I remarked, that both he himself, his servants, and his daughter, who was then about six years old, were all in mourning, and I afterwards found that he had lost his wife some months before.
I need dwell no further on my life at school, though the mixed character of the studies which I there pursued, and the nature of the books with which the good-natured Frenchman supplied me, gave that desultory character to my mind which it has never lost. I had a great greediness for information, without much regularity of arrangement or steadiness of pursuit; and when I left that school, which was at the end of two years and a half, I knew a great many things that other boys did not know, and a great deal less of many things than they did know.
What was the occasion of my quitting the school remains to be told. About half a year before I did quit it, my mother became Mrs. Somers, and my brother, whose ship was at Deal, was present, as well as myself, at the wedding, which was to give us a new father and a new home. Mr. Somers was very kind, and looked very happy; my mother was serious, but her vanity was flattered in various respects, and she easily found means to persuade herself that she was doing what was quite right and expedient. My brother, as smart as a naval uniform could make him, was as gay as a lark, and in robust health; and little Emily Somers, who was now a sweet girl of about eight years old, looked all delight, and was only too sure that she should love her new mamma most dearly. Strange enough to say, I was the only person who did not fully participate in the gaiety of the occasion. I had been, I am afraid, a spoilt child; my mother had seemed to love me better than any thing on earth; and certain it is that, even at that early age, I felt a degree of jealousy when I thought of any one else except my brother sharing in her affection. My poor brother was soon destined to leave me alone in her love. He returned to his ship as soon as the wedding breakfast was over, and shortly after sailed for the coast of Spain. One epistle, dated Gibraltar, informed us that he was well and happy, but the next ship-letter my mother received was written in the hand of the captain--an old comrade of my father--and its purport was to inform her, that her eldest son had fallen a victim to one of the severe fevers which occasionally visit the Peninsula.
My worldly prospects were of course greatly changed by this event. I was far too young myself--even if at any time of life I could have known such feelings--to derive the smallest portion of consolation for the loss of my brother from the acquisition of fortune which thus befell me: but my mother and Mr. Somers saw the affair both in an affectionate and in a worldly light. They both grieved sincerely, I am sure, for my brother, who was, as Mr. Somers declared, a very good lad indeed; but they both agreed also, that there was a considerable difference between four hundred and twelve hundred per annum; and my mother was delighted to believe, and Mr. Somers well pleased to suggest, that a private tutor might now very well be kept for me at home, instead of putting Mrs. Somers to the pain of having me always at a distance from her maternal eye. Thus I at once received the news of my brother's death and a summons to return to Portland Place, which was destined to be my home till I set out in the world for myself.
On my arrival I found my mother installed mistress of a splendid mansion, furnished newly from the garrets to the cellars, with a very kind and affectionate husband, and a lovely little girl for her companion in the person of his daughter. Her affection for myself, however, seemed to have increased rather than diminished, and it was easy to perceive that my will was to be her law. Two years before, such a perception would have ruined my disposition for ever, but I had already been some time at a school with, a great many boys older than myself. I had been drilled into some kind of discipline by the masters, and beaten into some knowledge of myself by my elders in the school. I had learned also a habit of scrutinizing my own thoughts and feelings, as well as those of other people, very unusual at that period of life, which has never left me, though I acknowledge that I have but too often been wrong in my conclusions, not only in regard to others, but even respecting myself. If our fellows in society can, for purposes of their own, throw a veil over their actions which we can seldom penetrate, surely vanity, passion, interest, and every other modification of selfishness, can, with art a thousand-fold more specious, still conceal from us the springs and motives of what is passing in our own bosom. It is only long-confirmed habit, dear-bought experience, and strong determination, which can tear away the mask successfully in either case. However, I had a strong sense of what is just and right also, and I was not long in perceiving that my mother not only loved me a great deal better than little Emily Somers--which I should not have objected to, because it seemed natural--but she also contrived to show that partiality in a manner which was not fair towards Emily. What Emily did was seldom right--what Emily said was always nonsense with her stepmother--and many and many a time have I had to fight Emily's battles, and defend Emily's cause, and petition in Emily's behalf, when the dear little creature neither did, nor said, nor desired, any thing but what was right. Emily felt the change, and as yet remembered her own mother sufficiently to weep over that change; but she was of a gay and happy disposition, bearing no malice, forgetting injuries, retentive of kindness, frank, true, and gentle; yet, withal, with a firmness of determination on points where some internal principle of rectitude told her that she should be firm, which contrasted strangely enough with the general mildness and placidity of her character. I could, were I so inclined, write down a thousand examples of this peculiar trait in her character; but as I intend merely to give a sketch of those years, it will be unnecessary. Suffice it, that when Emily had positively pledged herself to do or not to do any particular thing, no one attempted to turn her from it, for we all learned to know that it would be in vain.
It must be added, however, that these firm resolves were but seldom taken, and then only upon great occasions, when we were sure, sooner or later, to discover that Emily was right, for they were the offspring of firmness and not obstinacy, and I have often seen her execute her resolve with tears, so great was the struggle between her inclination and her sense of right.
Soon after my arrival in London, a tutor was found for me, and brought with him to our family a strong recommendation. Yet, although he was a learned and clever man, I am not sure that he was exactly the person best calculated to bring up a youth of a fiery temperament and an erratic imagination like myself. He had been long in Germany, it seems, where his mind had become strongly tinged with a sort of mysticism, a small portion of which soon communicated itself to me, and which only served to set my fancy wandering more wildly still. But that was not alone the evil which his residence in foreign lands had wrought in him. His moral principles had become strangely twisted, and though he advocated most eloquently the strictest adherence to truth, and was most rigorous and exact in his notions of justice and equity, yet, upon many other points, his notions were sadly relaxed. He was a tall uncouth man, too; by no means thin, but with no breadth of bone, and only gifted with a considerable quantity of muscle and fat, covering a frame originally long and narrow. Nor were his manners peculiarly pleasant, though they were by no means harsh or rude, but he was extremely fond of a joke, and knew no limit in pursuing it: often too, before the joke was apparent to other people, his fancy, tickled by some internal movement of his own mind, would set him off into long fits of laughter, during which his eyes would stream and his shoulders shake as if he were actually in convulsions.
Under his care and instructions I remained seven years, reading when it pleased me, for my mother took care that my own will was the only measure of my studies. Nevertheless, I read a great deal; for when I was fatigued by great corporal exercise, the craving of my mind for constant employment always returned, and I sat down with greediness to whatever was presented to me. A good deal of Latin, a very little Greek, an immensity of French, and a certain portion of Italian and Spanish, were thus run through, with, perhaps, little benefit; but the whole system of my studies, if that can be called system which had no regularity, was altered from what it had been when I was at school. It was my tutor's maxim that a man was born to know every thing, and consequently, no expurgated editions were put into my hand. The warmest of the Latin poets, and the least chaste of the French and Italian, were given to me without ceremony; and where I wanted notes or interpretations, my worthy tutor supplied them fully, sometimes in a grave and scientific manner, sometimes laughing till he was ready to fall from his chair. Immense quantities of English also did I read, ancient and modern, good and bad--Milton's purity and Rochester's filth; Southey's inimitable poetry, and the novels of Maria Regina Roche. Four books especially took possession of my imagination, and remain to the present time amongst those in which I can read every day. They were the Arabian Nights, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Southey's Curse of Kehema. My love for Shakspeare, Milton, and Wordsworth, came at an after period; and towards the age of seventeen, I began to read the romances of Sir Walter Scott--works which were calculated to do my mind the most infinite service, to blend the love of virtue with the spirit of adventure, and tame wild imagination to the uses of the world.