he eyes (that greatest of all merits), we know not; but the
widower became so fond of him that it was at a late period and with
great reluctance that he finally intrusted him to the providence of a
school.

Among harlots and gamblers and lords and sharpers, and gentlemen of
the guards, together with their frequent accompaniments,--guards of the
gentlemen, namely, bailiffs,--William Brandon passed the first stage of
his boyhood. He was about thirteen when he was sent to school; and being
a boy of remarkable talents, he recovered lost time so well that when
at the age of nineteen he adjourned to the University, he had scarcely
resided there a single term before he had borne off two of the highest
prizes awarded to academical merit. From the University he departed
on the "grand tour," at that time thought so necessary to complete the
gentleman; he went in company with a young nobleman, whose friendship he
had won at the University, stayed abroad more than two years, and on his
return he settled down to the profession of the law.

Meanwhile his father died, and his fortune, as a younger brother, being
literally next to nothing, and the family estate (for his brother was
not unwilling to assist him) being terribly involved, it was believed
that he struggled for some years with very embarrassed and penurious
circumstances. During this interval of his life, however, he was
absent from London, and by his brother supposed to have returned to
the Continent; at length, it seems, he profited by a renewal of his
friendship with the young nobleman who had accompanied him abroad,
reappeared in town, and obtained through his noble friend one or two
legal appointments of reputable emolument. Soon afterwards he got
a brief on some cause where a major had been raising a corps to his
brother officer, with the better consent of the brother-officer's wife
than of the brother officer himself. Brandon's abilities here, for the
first time in his profession, found an adequate vent; his reputation
seemed made at once, he rose rapidly in his profession, and, at the time
we now speak of, he was sailing down the full tide of fame and wealth,
the envy and the oracle of all young Templars and barristers, who,
having been starved themselves for ten years, began now to calculate
on the possibility of starving their clients. At an early period in
his career he had, through the good offices of the nobleman we have
mentioned, obtained a seat in the House