child's head nurse was under MY orders, not those of my lady; and a very
handsome, red-cheeked, impudent jade she was; and a great fool she made
me make of myself. This woman was more mistress of the house than the
poor-spirited lady who owned it. She gave the law to the servants; and
if I showed any particular attention to any of the ladies who visited
us, the slut would not scruple to show her jealousy, and to find means
to send them packing. The fact is, a generous man is always made a fool
of by some woman or other, and this one had such an influence over me
that she could turn me round her finger. [Footnote: From these curious
confessions, it would appear that Mr. Lyndon maltreated his lady in
every possible way; that he denied her society, bullied her into
signing away her property, spent it in gambling and taverns, was openly
unfaithful to her; and, when she complained, threatened to remove her
children from her. Nor, indeed, is he the only husband who has done
the like, and has passed for 'nobody's enemy but his own:' a jovial
good-natured fellow. The world contains scores of such amiable people;
and, indeed, it is because justice has not been done them that we
have edited this autobiography. Had it been that of a mere hero of
romance--one of those heroic youths who figure in the novels of Scott
and James--there would have been no call to introduce the reader to a
personage already so often and so charmingly depicted. Mr. Barry Lyndon
is not, we repeat, a hero of the common pattern; but let the reader look
round, and ask himself, Do not as many rogues succeed in life as honest
men? more fools than men of talent? And is it not just that the lives of
this class should be described by the student of human nature as well
as the actions of those fairy-tale princes, those perfect impossible
heroes, whom our writers love to describe? There is something naive
and simple in that time-honoured style of novel-writing by which Prince
Prettyman, at the end of his adventures, is put in possession of every
worldly prosperity, as he has been endowed with every mental and bodily
excellence previously. The novelist thinks that he can do no more for
his darling hero than make him a lord. Is it not a poor standard that,
of the summum bonum? The greatest good in life is not to be a lord;
perhaps not even to be happy. Poverty, illness, a humpback, may be
rewards and conditions of good, as well as that bodily prosperity which
all of us