India Company's Service: these four sate | gentlemen, had no reason, I will lay any down to dinner at Mrs. Veal's genteel board, when Georgy was introduced to her establishment.

Georgy was, like some dozen other pupils, only a day boy he arrived in the morning, under the guardianship of his friend Mr. Rowson, and if it was fine, would ride away in the afternoon on his pony, followed by the groom. The wealth of his grandfather was reported in the school to be prodigious. The Rev. Mr. Veal used to compliment Georgy upon it personally, waruing him that he was destined for a high station; that it became him to prepare, by sedulity and docil ty in youth, for the lofty duties to which he would be called in mature age; that obedience in the child was the best preparation for command in the man; and that he therefore begged George would not bring toffy into the school, and ruin the health of the Masters Bangles, who had every thing they wanted at the elegant and abundant table of Mrs. Veal.

With respect to learning, "the Curriculum," as Mr. Veal loved to call it, was of prodigious extent and the young gentlemen in Hart-street might learn a something of every known science. The Rev. Mr. Veal had an orrery, an electrifying machine, a turning lathe, a theater (in the wash-house), a chemical apparatus, and, what he called a select library of all the works of the best authors of ancient and modern times and languages. He took the boys to the British Museum, and descanted upon the antiquities and the specimens of natural history there, so that audiences would gather round him as he spoke, and all Bloomsbury highly admired him as a prodigiously well informed man. And whenever he spoke (which he did almost always), he took care to produce the very finest and longest words of which the Vocabulary gave him the use; rightly judging, | that it was as cheap to employ a handsome, large, and sonorous epithet, as to use a little stingy one.

Thus he would say to George in school, "I observed, on my return home from taking the indulgence of an evening's scientific conversation with my excellent friend Dector Bulders a true archæologian, gentlemen, a true archæologian-that the windows of your venerated grandfather's almost princely mansion in Russell-square were illuminated as if for the purposes of festivity. Am I right in my conjecture, that Mr. Osborne entertained a society of chosen spirits round his sumptuous board last night?"

wager, to complain of their repast. I myself have been more than once so favored. (By the way, Master Osborne, you came a little late this morning, and have been a defaulter in this respect more than once.) I myself. I say, gentlemen, humble as I am, have been found not unworthy to share Mr. Osborne's elegant hospitality. And though I have feasted with the great and noble of the world-for I presume that I may call my excellent friend and patron, the Right Honorable George Earl of Bareacres, as one of the number-yet I assure you, that the board of the British merchant was to the full as richly served, and his reception as gratifying and noble. 'Mr. Bluck, sir, we will resume, if you please, that passage of Eutropius, which was interrupted by the late arrival of Master Osborne.'"

To this great man George's education was for some time intrusted. Amelia was bewildered by his phrases, but thought him a prodigy of learning. That poor widow made friends with Mrs. Veal, for reasons of her own. She liked to be in the house, and see Georgy coming to school there. She liked to be asked to Mrs. Veal's conversazioni, which took place once a month (as you were informed on pink cards, with AOHNH engraved on them), and where the professor welcomed his pupils and their friends to weak tea and scientific conversation. Poor little Amelia never missed one of these entertainments, and thought them delicious so long as she might have Georgy sitting by her. And she would walk from Brompton in any weather, and embrace Mrs. Veal with tearful gratitude for the delightful evening she had passed, when, the company having retired and Georgy gone off with Mr. Rowson, his attendant, poor Mrs. Osborne put on her cloaks and her shawls preparatory to walking home.

As for the learning which Georgy imbibed under this voluble master of a hundred sciences, to judge from the weekly reports which the lad took home to his grandfather, his progress was remarkable. The names of a score or more of desirable branches of knowledge were printed on a table, and the pupil's progress in each was marked by the professor. In Greek Georgy was pronounced aristos, in Latin optimus, in French très bien, and so forth; and every body had prizes for every thing at the end of the year. Even Mr. Swartz, the woolly-headed young gentleman, and half-brother to the Honorable Mrs. Mac Mull, and Mr. Bluck the negLittle Georgy, who had considerable hu- lected young pupil of three and twenty from mor, and used to mimic Mr. Veal to his face the agricultural districts, and that idle young with great spirit and dexterity, would reply, scapegrace of a Master Todd before menthat Mr. V. was quite correct in his sur-tioned, received little eighteen-penny books, with "Athene" engraved in them, and a pompous Latin inscription from the professor to his young friends.

mise

Then those friends who had the honor of partaking of Mr. Osborne's hospitality,

The family of this Master Todd were hangers-on of the house of Osborne. The old gentleman had advanced Todd from being a clerk to be a junior partner in his establishment.

usual: and would smile when George came down late for breakfast.

Miss Osborne, George's aunt, was a miserable old spinster, broken down by more than forty years of dullness and coarse usage. It was easy for a lad of spirit to master her. And whenever George wanted any thing from her, from the jam-pots in her cupboards to the cracked and dry old colors in her paint-box (the old paint-box which she had had when she was a pupil of Mr. Smee, and was still almost young and blooming), Georgy took possession of the object of his desire, which obtained, he took no further notice of his aunt.

6

Jemima, a darling child of eight years old. The little pair looked so well together, she would say (but not to the folks in the Square,' we may be sure)," Who knows what might happen? Don't they make a pretty little couple ?" the fond mother thought.

Mr. Osborne was the godfather of young Master Todd (who in subsequent life wrote Mr. Osborne Todd on his cards, and became a man of decided fashion) while Miss Osborne had accompanied Miss Maria Todd to the font, and gave her protegée a prayerbook, a collection of tracts, a volume of very low church poetry, or some such memento of her goodness every year. Miss O. drove the Todds out in her carriage now and then when they were ill, her footman, in For his friends and cronies he had a large plush smalls and waistcoat, brought pompous old schoolmaster, who flattered jellies and delicacies from Russell-square him, and a toady, his senior, whom he could to Coram-street. Coram-street trembled thrash. It was dear Mrs. Todd's delight to and looked up to Russell-square indeed; leave him with her youngest daughter, Rosa and Mrs. Todd, who had a pretty hand at cutting out paper trimmings for haunches of mutton, and could make flowers, ducks, &c., out of turnips and carrots in a very creditable manner, would go to "the Square," as it was called, and assist in the preparations incident to a great dinner, without even so much as thinking of sitting The broken spirited old maternal granddown to the banquet. If any guest failed father was likewise subject to the little tyat the eleventh hour Todd was asked to rant. He could not help respecting a lad dine. Mrs. Todd and Maria came across who had such fine clothes, and rode with a in the evening, slipped in with a muffled groom behind him. Georgy on his side, knock, and were in the drawing-room by was in the constant habit of hearing course the time Miss Osborne and the ladies under abuse and vulgar satire leveled at John Sedher convoy reached that apartment; and ley by his pitiless old enemy, Mr. Osborne, ready to fire off duets and sing until the gen- Osborne used to call the other the old pautlemen came up. Poor Maria Todd; poor per, the old coal-man, the old bankrupt, and young lady! How she had to work and by many other such names of brutal conthrum at these duets and sonatas in the tumely. How was little George to respect Street, before they appeared in public in a man so prostrate? A few months after the Square! he was with his paternal grandfather, Mrs. Sedley died. There had been little love between her and the child. He did not care to show much grief. He came down to visit his mother in a fine new suit of mourning, and was very angry that he could not go to a play upon which he had set his heart.

Thus it seemed to be decreed by fate, that Georgy was to domineer over every body with whom he came in contact, and that friends, relatives, and domestics were all to bow the knee before the little fellow. It must be owned that he accommodated himself very willingly to this arrangement. Most people do so. And Georgy liked to play the part of master, and perhaps had a natural aptitude for it.

The illness of that old lady had been the occupation, and perhaps the safeguard of Amelia. What do men know about womIn Russell-square every body was afraid en's martyrdoms? We should go mad had of Mr. Osborne, and Mr. Osborne was afraid we to endure the hundredth part of those of Georgy. The boy's dashing manners, daily pains which are meekly borne by many and off-hand rattle about books and learning, women. Ceaseless slavery meeting with his likeness to his father (dead unreconciled no reward; constant gentleness and kindness in Brussels yonder), awed the old gentle- met by cruelty as constant; love, labor, paman, and gave the young boy the mastery. tience, watchfulness, without even so much The old man would start at some hereditary as the acknowledgment of a good word; feature or tone unconsciously used by the all this, how many of them have to bear in little lad, and fancy that Georgy's father quiet, and appear abroad with cheerful faces, was again before him. He tried by indul- as if they felt nothing. Tender slaves that gence to the grandson to make up for harsh- they are, they must needs be hypocrites and ness to the elder George. People were weak.

surprised at his gentleness to the boy. He From her chair Amelia's mother had growled and swore at Miss Osborne as taken to her bed, which she had never left;

S

and from which Mrs. Osborne herself was never absent except when she ran to see George. The old lady grudged her even those rare visits: she, who had been a kind, smiling, good-natured mother once, in the days of her prosperity, but whom poverty and infirmities had broken down. Her illness or estrangement did not affect Amelia. They rather enabled her to support the other calamity under which she was suffering, and from the thoughts of which she was kept by the ceaseless calls of the invalid. Amelia bore her harshness quite gently: smoothed the uneasy pillow; was always ready with a soft answer to the watchful, querulous voice; soothed the sufferer with words of hope, such as her pious, simple heart could best feel and utter, and closed the eyes that had once looked so tenderly upon her.

Then all her time and tenderness were devoted to the consolation and comfort of the bereaved old father, who was stunned by the blow which had befallen him, and stood utterly alone in the world. His wife, his honor, his fortune, every thing he loved best had fallen away from him. There was only Amelia to stand by and support with her gentle arms the tottering, heart-broken, old man. We are not going to write the history; it would be too dreary and stupid. I can see Vanity Fair yawning over it: d'avance.

sumed its habitual expression of bland courtesy, as he said, "Master Osborne, I give you full permission to go and see your carriage friends-to whom I beg you to convey the respectful compliments of myself and Mrs. Veal.”

Georgy went into the reception-room, and saw two strangers, whom he looked at with his head up, in his usual haughty manner. One was fat, with mustaches, and the other was lean and long, in a blue frock-coat, with a brown face, and a grizzled head. My God, how like he is!" said the long gentleman, with a start. "Can you guess who we are, George?"

ually

The boy's face flushed up, as it did when he was moved, and his eyes brightened. "I don't know the other," he said, "but I should think you must be Major Dobbin."

Indeed it was our old friend. His voice trembled with pleasure as he greeted the boy, and taking both the other's hands in his own, drew the lad to him.

"Your mother has talked to you about me--has she?" he said.

"That she has," Georgy answered, "hundreds and hundreds of times."

CHAPTER LVII.

EOTHEN.

One day as the young gentlemen were assembled in the study at the Rev. Mr. Veal's, IT was one of the many causes for perand the domestic chaplain to the Right Hon-sonal pride with which old Osborne chose orable the Earl of Bareacres was spouting to recreate himself, that Sedley, his anaway as usual—a smart carriage drove up cient rival, enemy, and benefactor, was in to the door decorated with the statue of Athene, and two gentlemen stepped out. The young Masters Bangles rushed to the window, with a vague notion that their father might have arrived from Bombay. The great hulking scholar of three-and-twenty, who was crying secretly over a passage of Eutropius, flattened his neglected nose against the panes, and looked at the drag, as the laquais de place sprang from the box and let out the persons in the carriage.

"It's a fat one and a thin one," Mr. Bluck said, as a thundering knock came to the door. Every body was interested, from the domestic chaplain himself, who hoped that he saw the fathers of some future pupils, down to Master Georgy, glad of any pretext for laying his book down.

his last days so utterly defeated and humiliated, as to be forced to accept pecuniary obligations at the hands of the man who had most injured and insulted him. The successful man of the world cursed the old pauper, and relieved him from time to time. As he furnished George with money for his mother, he gave the boy to understand by hints, delivered in his brutal, coarse way, that George's maternal grandfather was but a wretched old bankrupt and dependent; and that John Sedley might thank the man to whom he already owed ever so much money, for the aid which his generosity now chose to administer. George carried the pompous supplies to his mother and the shattered old widower whom it was now the main business of her life to tend and comfort. The little fellow patronized the feeble and disappointed old man.

The boy in the shabby livery, with the faded copper-buttons, who always thrust himself into the tight coat to open the door, It may have shown a want of" proper came into the study and said, "Two gentle- pride" in Amelia that she chose to accept men want to see Master Osborne." The these money benefits at the hands of her Professor had had a trifling altercation in father's enemy. But proper pride and this the morning with that young gentleman, poor lady had never had much acquaintance owing to a difference about the introduction together. A disposition naturally simple and of crackers in school-time; but his face re-demanding protection; a long course of

poverty and humility, or daily privations, and hard words, of kind offices and no returns, had been her lot ever since womanhood almost, or since her luckless marriage with George Osborne. You who see your betters, bearing up under this shame every day, meekly suffering under the slights of fortune, gentle and unpitied, poor, and rather despised for their poverty-do you ever step down from your prosperity and wash the feet of these poor wearied beggars? The very thought of them is odious and low. 66 There must be classes-there must be rich and poor," Dives says, smacking his claret it is well if he even sends the broken meat to Lazarus sitting under the window. Very true; but think how mysterious and often unaccountable it is-that lottery of life which gives to this man the purple and fine linen, and sends to the other rags for garments and dogs for comfort

ers.

halfp'orth of kindness act upon her, and bring tears into her eyes, as though you were an angel benefiting her.

Some such boons as these were the best which Fortune allotted to poor little Amelia. Her life, begun not unprosperously, had come down to this-to a mean prison and a long, ignoble bondage. Little George visited her captivity sometimes, and consoled it with feeble gleams of encouragement. Russell-square was the boundary of her prison: she might walk thither occasionally, but was always back to sleep in her cell at night; to perform cheerless duties; to watch by thankless sick-beds; to suffer the harassment and tyranny of querulous, disappointed old age. How many thousands of people are there, women for the most part, who are doomed to endure this long slavery? who are hospital-nurses without wages. Sisters of Charity, if you like, without the romance and the sentiment of sacrificewho strive, fast, watch, and suffer, unpitied; and fade away ignobly and unknown. The hidden and awful Wisdom which apportions the destinies of mankind, is pleased so to humiliate and cast down the tender, good, and wise; and to set up the selfish, the foolish, or the wicked. Oh, be humble, my brother, in your prosperity! Be gentle with those who are less lucky, if not more deserving. Think, what right have you to be scornful, whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation, whose success may be a chance, whose rank may be an ancestor's accident, whose prosperity is very likely a satire.

So I must own, that without much repining, on the contrary with something akin to gratitude, Amelia took the crumbs that her father-in-law let drop now and then, and with them fed her own parent. Directly she understood it to be her duty, it was this young woman's nature (ladies, she is but thirty still, and we choose to call her a young woman even at that age)—it was, I say, her nature to sacrifice herself, and to fling all that she had at the feet of the beloved object. During what long, 'thankless nights had she worked out her fingers for little Georgy while at home with her; what buffets, scorns, privations, poverties had she They buried Amelia's mother at the endured for father and mother! And in the churchyard at Brompton; upon just such a midst of all these solitary resignations and dark, rainy day as Amelia recollected when unseen sacrifices, she did not respect her- first she had been there to marry George. self any more than the world respected her; Her little boy sate by her side in pompous but I believe thought in her heart that she new sables. She remembered the old pewwas a poor-spirited, despicable little creat- woman and clerk. Her thoughts were ure whose luck in life was only too good away in other times as the parson read. for her merits. O you poor women! O But that she held George's hand in her own, you poor secret martyrs and victims, whose perhaps she would have liked to change life is torture, who are stretched on racks in places with... Then, as usual, she felt your bedrooms, and who lay your heads ashamed of her selfish thoughts, and praydown on the block daily at the drawing-ed inwardly to be strengthened to do her room table; every man who watches your pains, or peers into those dark places where the torture is administered to you, must pity you-and-and thank God that he has a beard. I recollect seeing years ago, at the prison for idiots and madmen at Bicêtre, near Paris, a poor wretch bent down under the bondage of his imprisonment and his personal infirmity, to whom one of our party gave a halfpennyworth of snuff in a 66 screw of paper. The kindness was too much for the poor epileptic creature. He cried in an anguish of delight and gratitude if any body gave you and me a thousand a year, or saved our lives, we could not be so affected. And so, if you properly tyrannize over a woman, you will find a

cornet or

duty.

So she determined with all her might and strength to try to make her old father happy. She slaved, toiled, patched, and mended, sang and played backgammon, read out the newspaper, cooked dishes for old Sedley, walked him out sedulously into Kensington Gardens or the Brompton Lanes, listened to his stories with untiring smiles and affectionate hypocrisy, or sate musing by his side and communing with her own thoughts and reminiscences, as the old man, feeble and querulous, sunned himself on the garden benches and prattled about his wrongs or his sorrows. What sad, unsatisfactory thoughts those of the widow were! The children running up and down the slopes and

broad paths in the gardens, reminded her of George who was taken from her: the first George was taken from her: her selfish, guilty love, in both instances, had been rebuked and bitterly chastised. She strove to think it was right that she should be so punished. She was such a miserable, wicked sinner. She was quite alone in the world.

Here as the poor fellow lay tossing in his fever, the people who watched him might, have heard him raving about Amelia. The idea that he should never see her again depressed him in his lucid hours. He thought his last day was come; and he made his solemn preparations for departure: setting his affairs in this world in order, and leaving the little property of which he was possessed to those whom he most desired to benefit. The friend in whose house he was located witnessed his testament. He desired to be buried with a little brown hair chain which he wore round his neck, and which, if the truth must be known, he had got from Amelia's maid at Brussels, when the young widow's hair was cut off, during the fever which prostrated her after the death of George Osborne on the plateau of Mount St. John.

I know that the account of this kind of solitary imprisonment is unsufferably tedious, unless there is some cheerful or humorous incident to enliven it-a tender jailer, for instance, or a waggish commandant of the fortress, or a mouse to come out and play about Latude's beard and whiskers, or a subterranean passage under the castle, dug by Trenck with his nails and a toothpick: the historian has no such enlivening incidents to relate in the narrative of Amelia's captivity. Fancy her, if you please, during this period, very sad, but always ready to smile when spoken to-in a very mean, poor, not to say vulgar position of life-singing songs, making puddings, playing cards, mending stockings, for her father's benefit. from Calcutta touching at Madras; and so So, never mind, whether she be a heroine or no; or you and I, however old, scolding, and bankrupt may we have in our last days a kind, soft shoulder on which to lean, and a gentle hand to soothe our gouty old pillows.

Old Sedley grew very fond of his daughter after his wife's death; and Amelia had her consolation in doing her duty by the old

man.

But we are not going to leave these two people long in such a low and ungenteel station of life. Better days, as far as worldly prosperity went, were in store for both. Perhaps the ingenious reader has guessed who was the stout gentleman who called upon Georgy at his school, in company with our old friend Major Dobbin. It was another old acquaintance returned to England, and at a time when his presence was likely to be of great comfort to his relatives there.

Major Dobbin having easily succeeded in getting leave from his good-natured commandant to proceed to Madras, and thence probably to Europe, on urgent private affairs, never ceased traveling night and day until he reached his journey's end, and had directed his march with such celerity, that he arrived at Madras in a high fever. His servants who accompanied him, brought him to the house of the friend with whom he had resolved to stay until his departure for Europe in a state of delirium; and it was thought for many days that he would never travel farther than the burying-ground of the church of St. George's, where the troops should fire a salvo over his grave, and where many a gallant officer lies far away from his home.

He recovered, rallied, relapsed again, having undergone such a process of blood-letting and calomel as showed the strength of his original constitution. He was almost a skeleton when they put him on board the Ramchunder, East Indiaman, Captain Bragg,

weak and prostrate, that his friend who had tended him through his illness, prophesied that the honest major would never survive the voyage, and that he would pass some morning, shrouded in a flag and hammock, over the ship's side, and carrying down to the sea with him the relic that he wore at his heart. But whether it was the sea air, or the hope which sprung up in him afresh, from the day that the ship spread her canvas and stood out of the roads toward home, our friend began to amend, and he was quite well (though as gaunt as a grayhound) before they reached the Cape. "Kirk will be disappointed of his majority this time," he said with a smile; "he will expect to find himself gazetted by the time the regiment reaches home." For it must be premised that while the major was lying ill at Madras, having made such a prodigious haste to go thither, the gallant —th, which had passed many years abroad, which after its return from the West Indies had been balked of its stay at home by the Waterloo campaign, and had been ordered from Flanders to India, had received orders home; and the major might have accompanied his comrades, had he chosen to wait for their arrival at Madras.

Perhaps he was not inclined to put himself in his exhausted state again under the guardianship of Glorvina. "I think Miss O'Dowd would have done for me," he said, laughingly, to a fellow-passenger, "if we had had her on board, and when she had sunk me, she would have fallen upon you, depend upon it, and carried you in as a prize to Southampton, Jos, my boy."

For indeed it was no other than our stout friend who was also a passenger on board