Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Coronation of George the Fourth—And recollections of his reign. My father—like Mrs. Charles Kemble, as her daughter records—" hated a fool," and I should imagine, from various circumstances, had no horror of a really learned lady. At any rate, he had planned for my education that it should have the solid foundation of Latin and Greek. But his death, when I was eight and a half years old, resulted in long years of straitened circumstances; and the teaching at a good day school was all my mother could afford me. Thus, with a very brief exception, to be measured by weeks rather than months, when I was placed with an excellent teacher, I was, out of school hours, nearly always in the society of my elders. I mention this, and one or two other personal circumstances, to account for my taking an interest in events which surely must have been little heeded by the generality of children. I had a younger brother—a high-spirited and thoroughly boyish boy, of whom by-and-by I shall have to speak in connection with an historical event; but, whatever hismerits, he was little of a companion to his quiet, book-loving sister; so that in many respects I was lifted prematurely out of childish thoughts and childish interests. But my mother had been my father's second wife ; and I had two half-brothers, the elder of whom died in India, after distinguishing himself in various ways. He was the first to introduce gas to the streets of Calcutta. The younger, thirteen years older than I, had studied for the law; but the disastrous loss my father had experienced through Mr. G had delayed the articling of my brother H., so that, though probably as well instructed as if the necessary formalities had been gone through, he was not able at once to take up my father's connection. He wa...