d manner, as
showed all the world that it was from prudence and a desire of enjoying
his money, not from cowardice, that he quitted the profession of arms.

When this Hackton company was raised, my stepson, who was now sixteen
years of age, was most eager to be allowed to join it, and I would have
gladly consented to have been rid of the young man; but his guardian,
Lord Tiptoff, who thwarted me in everything, refused his permission, and
the lad's military inclinations were balked. If he could have gone on
the expedition, and a rebel rifle had put an end to him, I believe, to
tell the truth, I should not have been grieved over-much; and I should
have had the pleasure of seeing my other son the heir to the estate
which his father had won with so much pains.

The education of this young nobleman had been, I confess, some of the
loosest; and perhaps the truth is, I DID neglect the brat. He was of
so wild, savage, and insubordinate a nature, that I never had the least
regard for him; and before me and his mother, at least, was so moody and
dull, that I thought instruction thrown away upon him, and left him for
the most part to shift for himself. For two whole years he remained
in Ireland away from us; and when in England, we kept him mainly at
Hackton, never caring to have the uncouth ungainly lad in the genteel
company in the capital in which we naturally mingled. My own poor boy,
on the contrary, was the most polite and engaging child ever seen: it
was a pleasure to treat him with kindness and distinction; and before he
was five years old, the little fellow was the pink of fashion, beauty,
and good breeding.

In fact he could not have been otherwise, with the care both his parents
bestowed upon him, and the attentions that were lavished upon him in
every way. When he was four years old, I quarrelled with the English
nurse who had attended upon him, and about whom my wife had been so
jealous, and procured for him a French gouvernante, who had lived with
families of the first quality in Paris; and who, of course, must set my
Lady Lyndon jealous too. Under the care of this young woman my little
rogue learned to chatter French most charmingly. It would have done your
heart good to hear the dear rascal swear Mort de ma vie! and to see
him stamp his little foot, and send the manants and canaille of the
domestics to the trente mille diables. He was precocious in all things:
at a very early age he would mimic everybody; at five