orer and poorer as the generations rolled on, and that
manor of Daylesford which had been in the family in the days of the
second Henry had passed in the year of Sheriffmuir into the hands of a
Gloucester merchant. When Warren Hastings was born, the fortunes of
the house had come to a very low ebb indeed. Pynaston Hastings, Warren
Hastings's father, was, perhaps, as imbecile a man as ever yet was the
means of bringing an illustrious son into the world. He seems to have
been weak, foolish, shiftless, as {246} worthless as a man well could
be who was not actually a criminal. He had married very young, before
he was sixteen; his wife had died shortly after giving birth to Warren
Hastings. Pynaston married again, entered the Church, when he was old
enough to take holy orders, and drifted away into the West Indies into
outer darkness and oblivion, leaving children entirely dependent upon
the charity of relatives. That charity did not fail, though at first
it could be but meagrely extended. Warren Hastings's grandfather was
desperately poor. All he could do for his deserted grandchild was to
place him at the charity school of the village. There, habited almost
like a beggar, taught as a beggar, the companion of clowns and
playfellow of rustics, the future peer of kings and ruler of rajahs,
the coming pro-consul who was yet to make the state of England as
imperial as the state of Rome, received his earliest lessons in the
facts of life, and dreamed his earliest dreams. His were strange
dreams. In sleep, says a Persian poet with whom young Hastings was
afterwards doubtless acquainted, the beggar and the king are equal. If
Warren Hastings slept as a beggar, he certainly dreamed as a king. We
know, on his own statement, that when he was but a child of seven he
cherished that wild ambition which was to lead him through so many
glories and so many crimes. We are familiar with the picture of the
boy leaning over the stream on that summer day, and looking at the old
dwelling of his race, and swearing to himself his oath of Hannibal that
some day he would, if the stars were propitious, win back his
inheritance.

[Sidenote: 1750--Warren Hastings's early life]

Somewhere about a year after this oath of Hannibal the fortunes of the
lad took a turn for the better. An uncle, Howard Hastings, who had a
place in the Customs, was willing to give a helping hand to the son of
his graceless brother. He brought Warren Hastings to