baptized by the name of my grand greatgrandpapa, Harley Radington. So much for my pedigree on the side of my father, John Radington, the son of Marmaduke Radington, the grandson of Harley Radington, esquire, of Radington House; and of John Gale, tobacconist, of the city of London. I must now, according to the custom of biographers, speak of my education, which was not conducted on a plan much to the honour of my parents, or to my own advantage. My father was resolved I should be a good arithmetician-my mother was determined I should be perfectly genteel, and the best dancer in England: they were most unfortunate in their hopes and wishes with regard to me; to dancing I had an insuperable aversion, and I was fifteen before I learned the multiplication table. I must do myself the justice to say, this did not proceed so much from want of capacity, as from the methods which were pursued; my mother could not bear me out out of her sight, therefore I was not sent to a public school-or to the care of a private master, lest he should be too harsh to mamma's darling; governess after governess came, and retired in quick succession; many of these were no doubt worthy, amiable women, well fitted for what they had undertaken to break in and teach a spoiled - and only child. My mother thought them angels of light for the first month or fortnight, and afterwards they were angels of darkness. I was accustomed to hear and see them treated with the utmost contempt, and saw them too frequently used worse than the meanest menial in the house. It is the greatest folly of parents to expect their children to improve under the tuition of people, whom they are in habits of seeing treated with contempt or indifference. At the age of eight it was deemed high time, by both my parents, to take me from the hands of my female instructors. A tutor was procured for me: he was a man of of sense and learning; but, alas! what availed his sense and learning to me? He was soon disgusted, and left me to my fate. Five unprofitable years again rolled on; I grew in stature, and my passions grew-my evil propensities, nursed and indulged from earliest infancy, daily acquired new strength. What a misfortune to be the only child of weak and wealthy parents! better, a thousand times, to be born to poverty and labour. It is not the offspring of the poor only who are born to dependence the children of the wealthy are often the most dependent and miserable beings in existence. I entered my fourteenth year, ignorant of all useful or important knowledge, and miserably deficient in the most ordinary branches of education, and destitute even of those accomplishments which my mo ther thought alone sufficient to make me a gentleman. My father would urge, with a serious countenance, that it was actually necessary I should leave home, and be sent sent to school, or I would be good for nothing. My mother would exclaim-" If you send my darling Harley to a public school, or from home to any school, I can tell you, Mr. Radington, it will be one nail in my coffin-you will break my heart; the dear boy is so delicate, he cannot exist under care less tender than a mother's. What need has your son, or my son, Mr. Radington, for learning? Has he not wealth, splendid wealth, on one side? and has he not birth on both sides? He is a gentleman born, and has wherewithal to support that title-he need not, poor dear! be educated into a consumption. We don't want to make a parson of him-or a lawyer of him-or a doctor of him, do we?-No, thank God! he has as good a right to be a gentleman as any body in the world." "I do not dispute his right to it, Eliza; but if Harley grows up in ignorance of every thing a gentleman should know, his wealth will avail him little in the opinion of |