the best stud of hunters in the county, on which, during the season, he followed the fox gallantly; had he been a fortunate man he would never have cursed his fate, as he was frequently known to do; ten months after his marriage his horse fell upon him, and so injured him, that he expired in a few days in great agony.  My grandfather was, indeed, a fortunate man; when he died he was followed to the grave by the tears of the poor—­my father was not.

’Two remarkable circumstances are connected with my birth—­I am a posthumous child, and came into the world some weeks before the usual time, the shock which my mother experienced at my father’s death having brought on the pangs of premature labour; both my mother’s life and my own were at first despaired of; we both, however, survived the crisis.  My mother loved me with the most passionate fondness, and I was brought up in this house under her own eye—­I was never sent to school.

’I have already told you that mine is not a tale of adventure; my life has not been one of action, but of wild imaginings and strange sensations; I was born with excessive sensibility, and that has been my bane.  I have not been a fortunate man.

’No one is fortunate unless he is happy, and it is impossible for a being constructed like myself to be happy for an hour, or even enjoy peace and tranquillity; most of our pleasures and pains are the effects of imagination, and wherever the sensibility is great, the imagination is great also.  No sooner has my imagination raised up an image of pleasure, than it is sure to conjure up one of distress and gloom; these two antagonist ideas instantly commence a struggle in my mind, and the gloomy one generally, I may say invariably, prevails.  How is it possible that I should be a happy man?

’It has invariably been so with me from the earliest period that I can remember; the first playthings that were given me caused me for a few minutes excessive pleasure:  they were pretty and glittering; presently, however, I became anxious and perplexed, I wished to know their history, how they were made, and what of—­were the materials precious?  I was not satisfied with their outward appearance.  In less than an hour I had broken the playthings in an attempt to discover what they were made of.

’When I was eight years of age my uncle the baronet, who was also my godfather, sent me a pair of Norway hawks, with directions for managing them; he was a great fowler.  Oh, how rejoiced was I with the present which had been made me, my joy lasted for at least five minutes; I would let them breed, I would have a house of hawks; yes, that I would—­but—­and here came the unpleasant idea—­suppose they were to flyaway, how very annoying!  Ah, but, said hope, there’s little fear of that; feed them well and they will never fly away, or if they do they will come back, my uncle says so; so sunshine triumphed for a little time.  Then the strangest of all doubts came into my head; I doubted the legality