towards him. If I have any principle which has guided me through life,
it has been respect for the Establishment, and a hearty scorn and
abhorrence of all other forms of belief. I therefore sent my French
body-servant, in the year 17--, to Dublin with a commission to bring
the young reprobate over; and the report brought to me was that he
had passed the whole of the last night of his stay in Ireland with his
Popish friend at the mass-house; that he and my mother had a violent
quarrel on the very last day; that, on the contrary, he kissed Biddy and
Dosy, her two nieces, who seemed very sorry that he should go; and that
being pressed to go and visit the rector, he absolutely refused, saying
he was a wicked old Pharisee, inside whose doors he would never set his
foot. The doctor wrote me a letter, warning me against the deplorable
errors of this young imp of perdition, as he called him; and I could see
that there was no love lost between them. But it appeared that, if not
agreeable to the gentry of the country, young Bullingdon had a huge
popularity among the common people. There was a regular crowd weeping
round the gate when his coach took its departure. Scores of the ignorant
savage wretches ran for miles along by the side of the chariot; and some
went even so far as to steal away before his departure, and appear
at the Pigeon-House at Dublin to bid him a last farewell. It was with
considerable difficulty that some of these people could be kept from
secreting themselves in the vessel, and accompanying their young lord to
England.

To do the young scoundrel justice, when he came among us, he was a
manly noble-looking lad, and everything in his bearing and appearance
betokened the high blood from which he came. He was the very portrait
of some of the dark cavaliers of the Lyndon race, whose pictures hung
in the gallery at Hackton: where the lad was fond of spending the chief
part of his time, occupied with the musty old books which he took out of
the library, and which I hate to see a young man of spirit poring over.
Always in my company he preserved the most rigid silence, and a haughty
scornful demeanour; which was so much the more disagreeable because
there was nothing in his behaviour I could actually take hold of to find
fault with: although his whole conduct was insolent and supercilious to
the highest degree. His mother was very much agitated at receiving him
on his arrival; if he felt any such agitation he certai