had been gifted by Heaven,--he was
sent to the University of Oxford to complete the curriculum of studies
necessary to make him a complete gentleman. And I have heard, indeed,
that he was singularly endowed with the properties requisite for the
making of that very rare animal:--that he was quick, ready, generous,
warm-hearted, skilful, and accomplished,--that he rode, and drove, and
shot, and fenced, and swam, and fished in that marvellously finished
manner only possible to those who seem to have been destined by a
capricious Fate to do so well that which they have never learned to do.
And at college, who but Jemmy Dawson--who but he? For a wicked prank, or
a mad carouse; for a trick to be played on a proctor, or a kiss to be
taken by stealth,--who such a Master of Arts as our young Undergraduate?
But at his lectures and chapels and repetitions he was (although always
with a vast natural capacity) an inveterate Idler; and he did besides so
continually violate and outrage the college rules and discipline, that
his Superiors, after repeated admonitions, gatings, impositions, and
rustications (which are a kind of temporary banishment), were at last
fain solemnly to expel him from the University. Upon which his father
discarded him from his house, vowing that he would leave his broad acres
(which were not entailed) to his Nephew, and bidding him go to the
Devil; whither he accordingly proceeded, but by a very leisurely and
circuitous route. But the young Rogue had already made a more perilous
journey than this, for he had fallen in Love with a young Madam of
exceeding Beauty, and of large Fortune in her own right, the daughter of
a neighbouring Baronet. And she, to her sorrow, poor soul, became as
desperately enamoured of this young Scapegrace, and would have run away
with him, I have no doubt, had he asked her, but for a spark of honour
which still remained in that reckless Heart, and forbade his linking the
young girl, all good and pure as she was, to so desperate a life as his.
And so he went wandering for a time up and down the country, swaggering
with his boon companions, and pawning his Father's credit in whatsoever
inns and pothouses he came unto, until, in the beginning of that fatal
year '46, he must needs find himself at Manchester without a Shilling in
his pocket, or the means of raising one. It was then the time that the
town of Manchester had been captured, in the Pretender's interest, by a
Scots Sergeant and a