mpression of anybody whom he had had, as a grown man, the opportunity
of testing in later years.

How it came that, being what he was, he should now have fallen into the
misery and neglect of the time about to be described, was a subject on
which thoughts were frequently interchanged between us; and on one
occasion he gave me a sketch of the character of his father, which, as I
can here repeat it in the exact words employed by him, will be the best
preface I can make to what I feel that I have no alternative but to
tell. "I know my father to be as kind-hearted and generous a man as
ever lived in the world. Everything that I can remember of his conduct
to his wife, or children, or friends, in sickness or affliction, is
beyond all praise. By me, as a sick child, he has watched night and day,
unweariedly and patiently, many nights and days. He never undertook any
business, charge, or trust, that he did not zealously, conscientiously,
punctually, honorably discharge. His industry has always been untiring.
He was proud of me, in his way, and had a great admiration of the comic
singing. But, in the ease of his temper, and the straitness of his
means, he appeared to have utterly lost at this time the idea of
educating me at all, and to have utterly put from him the notion that I
had any claim upon him, in that regard, whatever. So I degenerated into
cleaning his boots of a morning, and my own; and making myself useful in
the work of the little house; and looking after my younger brothers and
sisters (we were now six in all); and going on such poor errands as
arose out of our poor way of living."

The cousin by marriage of whom I have spoken, James Lamert, who had
lately completed his education at Sandhurst and was waiting in hopes of
a commission, lived now with the family in Bayham Street, and had not
lost his taste for the stage, or his ingenuities in connection with it.
Taking pity on the solitary lad, he made and painted a little theatre
for him. It was the only fanciful reality of his present life; but it
could not supply what he missed most sorely, the companionship of boys
of his own age, with whom he might share in the advantages of school and
contend for its prizes. His sister Fanny was at about this time elected
as a pupil to the Royal Academy of Music; and he has told me what a
stab to his heart it was, thinking of his own disregarded condition, to
see her go away to begin her education, amid the tearful good wishes