The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tom Brown's Schooldays, by Thomas Hughes

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Title: Tom Brown's Schooldays

Author: Thomas Hughes

Release Date: February 15, 2006 [EBook #1480]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Gil Jaysmith and David Widger

TOM BROWN'S SCHOOLDAYS

By Thomas Hughes

PART I.

CHAPTER I--THE BROWN FAMILY

"I'm the Poet of White Horse Vale, sir,
With liberal notions under my cap."--Ballad

The Browns have become illustrious by the pen of Thackeray and the
pencil of Doyle, within the memory of the young gentlemen who are now
matriculating at the universities. Notwithstanding the well-merited but
late fame which has now fallen upon them, any one at all acquainted with
the family must feel that much has yet to be written and said before the
British nation will be properly sensible of how much of its greatness it
owes to the Browns. For centuries, in their quiet, dogged, homespun way,
they have been subduing the earth in most English counties, and leaving
their mark in American forests and Australian uplands. Wherever the
fleets and armies of England have won renown, there stalwart sons of the
Browns have done yeomen's work. With the yew bow and cloth-yard shaft at
Cressy and Agincourt--with the brown bill and pike under the brave
Lord Willoughby--with culverin and demi-culverin against Spaniards and
Dutchmen--with hand-grenade and sabre, and musket and bayonet, under
Rodney and St. Vincent, Wolfe and Moore, Nelson and Wellington, they
have carried their lives in their hands, getting hard knocks and hard
work in plenty--which was on the whole what they looked for, and the
best thing for them--and little praise or pudding, which indeed they,
and most of us, are better without. Talbots and Stanleys, St. Maurs,
and such-like folk, have led armies and made laws time out of mind; but
those noble families would be somewhat astounded--if the accounts ever
came to be fairly taken--to find how small their work for England has
been by the side of that of the Browns.

These latter, indeed, have, until the present generation, rar