d
some mortality in the Legard family; in one year after returning to
England and settling in B-----shire, the admiral found himself wifeless
and childless. He then turned to his orphan nephew; and soon became
fonder of him than he had ever been of his own children. The admiral,
though in easy circumstances, was not wealthy; nevertheless, he advanced
the money requisite for George's rise in the army, and doubled the
allowance bestowed by the duke. His grace heard of this generosity, and
discovered that he himself had a very large family growing up; that the
marquess was going to be married, and required an increase of income;
that he had already behaved most handsomely to his nephew; and the
result of this discovery was that the duke withdrew the two hundred a
year. Legard, however, who looked on his uncle as an exhaustless mine,
went on breaking hearts and making debts--till one morning he woke in
the Bench. The admiral was hastily summoned to London. He arrived;
paid off the duns--a kindness which seriously embarrassed him--swore,
scolded, and cried; and finally insisted that Legard should give up
that d-----d coxcomb regiment, in which he was now captain, retire on
half-pay, and learn economy and a change of habits on the Continent.

The admiral, a rough but good-natured man on the whole, had two or three
little peculiarities. In the first place, he piqued himself on a sort of
John Bull independence; was a bit of a Radical (a strange anomaly in an
admiral)--which was owing, perhaps, to two or three young lords having
been put over his head in the earlier part of his career; and he made
it a point with his nephew (of whose affection he was jealous) to
break with those fine grand connections, who plunged him into a sea of
extravagance, and then never threw him a rope to save him from drowning.

In the second place, without being stingy, the admiral had a good deal
of economy in his disposition. He was not a man to allow his nephew to
ruin him. He had an extraordinarily old-fashioned horror of gambling,--a
polite habit of George's; and he declared positively that his nephew
must, while a bachelor, learn to live upon seven hundred a year.
Thirdly, the admiral could be a very stern, stubborn, passionate old
brute; and when he coolly told George, "Harkye, you young puppy, if you
get into debt again--if you exceed the very handsome allowance I make
you--I shall just cut you off with a shilling," George was fully aware
that