-fellows for a
considerable time; and if I acquired--as I certainly did--a larger
stock of knowledge than he, it was by no means from any superior
capacity on my part, but that his mind was bent on other pursuits. He
was a born Nimrod, and his father encouraged this propensity from the
earliest moment that his darling and only son could sit a pony, or
handle a light fowling-piece. Dutton, senior, was one of a then large
class of persons, whom Cobbett used to call bull-frog farmers; men
who, finding themselves daily increasing in wealth by the operation
of circumstances they neither created nor could insure or
control--namely, a rapidly increasing manufacturing population, and
tremendous war-prices for their produce--acted as if the chance-blown
prosperity they enjoyed was the result of their own forethought,
skill, and energy, and therefore, humanly speaking, indestructible.
James Dutton was, consequently, denied nothing--not even the luxury of
neglecting his own education; and he availed himself of the lamentable
privilege to a great extent. It was, however, a remarkable feature in
the lad's character, that whatever he himself deemed essential should
be done, no amount of indulgence, no love of sport or dissipation,
could divert him from thoroughly accomplishing. Thus he saw clearly,
that even in the life--that of a sportsman-farmer--he had chalked out
for himself, it was indispensably necessary that a certain quantum of
educational power should be attained; and so he really acquired a
knowledge of reading, writing, and spelling, and then withdrew from
school to more congenial avocations.

I frequently met James Dutton in after-years; but some nine or ten
months had passed since I had last seen him, when I was directed by
the chief partner in the firm to which Flint and I subsequently
succeeded, to take coach for Romford, Essex, in order to ascertain
from a witness there what kind of evidence we might expect him to give
in a trial to come off in the then Hilary term, at Westminster Hall.
It was the first week in January: the weather was bitterly cold; and I
experienced an intense satisfaction when, after despatching the
business I had come upon, I found myself in the long dining-room of
the chief market-inn, where two blazing fires shed a ruddy, cheerful
light over the snow-white damask table-cloth, bright glasses,
decanters, and other preparatives for the farmers' market-dinner.
Prices had ruled high that day; wheat