and long remembered, how kindly little Warren took to his book.  The daily sight of the lands which his ancestors had possessed, and which had passed into the hands of strangers, filled his young brain with wild fancies and projects.  He loved to hear stories of the wealth and greatness of his progenitors, of their splendid housekeeping, their loyalty, and their valour.  On one bright summer day, the boy, then just seven years old, lay on the bank of the rivulet which flows through the old domain of his house to join the Isis.  There, as threescore and ten years later he told the tale, rose in his mind a scheme which, through all the turns of his eventful career, was never abandoned.  He would recover the estate which had belonged to his fathers.  He would be Hastings of Daylesford.  This purpose, formed in infancy and poverty, grew stronger as his intellect expanded and as his fortune rose.  He pursued his plan with that calm but indomitable force of will which was the most striking peculiarity of his character.  When, under a tropical sun, he ruled fifty millions of Asiatics, his hopes, amidst all the cares of war, finance, and legislation, still pointed to Daylesford.  And when his long public life, so singularly chequered with good and evil, with glory and obloquy, had at length closed for ever, it was to Daylesford that he retired to die.

When he was eight years old, his uncle Howard determined to take charge of him, and to give him a liberal education.  The boy went up to London, and was sent to a school at Newington, where he was well taught but ill fed.  He always attributed the smallness of his stature to the hard and scanty fare of this seminary.  At ten he was removed to Westminster school, then flourishing under the care of Dr. Nichols.  Vinny Bourne, as his pupils affectionately called him, was one of the masters.  Churchill, Colman, Lloyd, Cumberland, Cowper, were among the students.  With Cowper, Hastings formed a friendship which neither the lapse of time, nor a wide dissimilarity of opinions and pursuits, could wholly dissolve.  It does not appear that they ever met after they had grown to manhood.  But forty years later, when the voices of many great orators were crying for vengeance on the oppressor of India, the shy and secluded poet could image to himself Hastings the Governor-General only as the Hastings with whom he had rowed on the Thames and played in the cloister, and refused to believe that so good-tempered a fellow could have done anything very wrong.  His own life had been spent in praying, musing, and rhyming among the waterlilies of the Ouse.  He had preserved in no common measure the innocence of childhood.  His spirit had indeed been severely tried, but not by temptations which impelled him to any gross violation of the rules of social morality.  He had never been attacked by combinations of powerful and deadly enemies.  He had never been compelled to make a choice between innocence and greatness, between crime and ruin.  Firmly as he held in theory the doctrine of human depravity, his habits were such that he was unable to conceive how far from the path of right even kind and noble natures may be hurried by the rage of conflict and the lust of dominion.