



Produced by Charles Bowen from Page scans provided by
Google Books, (Public Library, Long Island City, N.Y.











Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scans provided by Google Books,
https://books.google.com/books?id=OAQiAAAAMAAJ
(Public Library, Long Island City, N.Y.)

2. "This work was published many years ago anonymously, and received
the name of 'Delaware; or, The ruined family.'"--Introd.,
p. [v], to London, 1848, ed.

3. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].






THIRTY YEARS SINCE;

OR,

THE RUINED FAMILY.

A Tale.

BY
G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.,

AUTHOR OF
"A WHIM, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES," "GOWRIE," "SIR THEODORE BROUGHTON,"
"BEAUCHAMP," "LAST OF THE FAIRIES," "MARGARET GRAHAM," ETC., ETC.


NEW-YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
329 & 331 PEARL STREET,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1860.



THIRTY YEARS SINCE:
OR,
THE RUINED FAMILY.


CHAPTER I.

Most cities are hateful; and, without any disposition to "babble about
green fields," it must be owned that each is more or less detestable.
Nevertheless, among them all, there is none to be compared, as a
whole, to London--none which comprehends within itself, from various
causes, so much of the sublime in every sort. Whether we consider its
giant immensity of expanse--the wonderful intricacy of its internal
structure--the miraculous harmony of its discrepant parts--the grand
amalgamation of its different orders, classes, states, pursuits,
professions--the mighty aggregate of hopes, wishes, endeavors, joys,
successes, fears, pangs, disappointments, crimes, and punishments,
that it contains--its relative influence on the world at large--or the
vehement pulse with which that "mighty heart" sends the flood of
circulation through this beautiful land--we shall find that that most
wonderful microcosm well deserves the epithet _sublime_.

To view it rightly--if we wish to view it with the eye of a
philosopher--we should choose, perhaps, the hour which is chosen by
the most magnificent and extraordinary of modern poets, and gaze upon
it when the sun is just beginning to pour his first red beams through
the dim and loaded air, when that vast desert of brick and mortar,
that interminable wilderness of spires and chimneys, looks more wide
and endless, and solemn, than when the eye is distracted by myriads of
mites that creep about it in the risen day.

It may be asked, perhaps, who is there that ever saw it at that hour,
except the red-armed housemaid washing the morning step, and letting
in the industrious thief, to steal the greatcoats from the hall; or
the dull muffin-man, who goes tinkling his early bell through the
misty streets of the wintry morning? Granted, that neither of
these--nor the sellers of early purl--nor the venders of saloop and
cocoa--nor Covent Garden market-women--nor the late returners from the
_finish_--nor he who starts up from the doorway, where he has passed
the wretched night, to recommence the day's career of crime, and
danger, and sorrow--can look upon the vast hive in which they dwell
with over-refined feelings; and, perhaps, to them may come home
unhappy Shelley's forcible line--


     "Hell is a city very much like London!"


The valetudinarian, too, who wakes with nervous punctuality to
swallow down the morning draught, prescribed by courtly Henry's
bitter-covering skill, may curse the cats that, perched upon the
tiles, salute their lady-loves with most discordant cries, and keep
him from repose; and with all the virulence of Despréaux, may exclaim
upon the many hateful sounds of a town morning. But, besides all
these, there are sometimes persons who, rising five hours before their
usual time, come forth in all the freshness of the early day,
stimulated by the vast effort that roused them from their beds, proud
of a successful endeavor to get up, and excited by the novelty of the
circumstance and the scene, and who rush on, admiring all the beauties
as they go to take their places in the gay stage-coach.

Fully double the extent of ancient Athens, in its days of greatest
splendor--at least, if the calculation of Aristides be correct--London
lies in circuit more than one day's journey, and many a day's journey
may be taken in the interior, without ever threading the same streets.
It would not matter much, therefore, in what corner of the town was
placed the coach-office whence, at an early hour of every lawful day,
set forth a smart-looking vehicle, drawn by four fiery bays, for a
distant town in ----shire; but nevertheless, as it may be a
satisfaction to the reader's mind, it is but fair to state, that the
aforesaid four-inside light coach took its departure daily from that
wild scene of bustle and confusion, which, within the last century or
two, has usurped the site of what a modern writer of ancient romance
terms "the sweet little village of Charing," and which is now
popularly called the Golden Cross, Charing Cross.

As the things that were, are now no more, and even three short years
have made sad havoc amidst the brick antiquities of dear Pall Mall, it
may not be amiss more particularly to commemorate the appearance--at
the time our tale commences--of that agglomeration of street-corners,
Charing Cross, from which--on account, I suppose, of its beautiful
vagueness--all rogues and insolvent debtors were wont to date their
letters. But this commemoration had best be given in describing the
effect of the whole upon a young and unsophisticated mind.

From a place that they call a hotel, in Piccadilly--think of a man
taking up his abode at a hotel in Piccadilly!--but he knew no
better--from a hotel, in Piccadilly, at about half-past five o'clock,
on the morning of the last day of August, one thousand eight hundred
and something, set out a hackney coach, containing within its sphere
of rotten wood, and rusty leather, a small portmanteau on the front
seat, and the portmanteau's master on the other. He was a well-made
youth, of about five-and-twenty years of age, with firm, graceful, and
yet powerful limbs, and a fresh, clear complexion--not villainous red
and white, but one general tone of florid health. His eye was blue and
bright, and the clustering curls of fair hair--as pure Saxon as Sharon
Turner's last new book--might have looked somewhat girlish, had it not
been for the manly features and the free, dauntless look that they
overshadowed. At the same time, be it remarked that there was
something of melancholy, if not of gloom, in his aspect; but that did
not prevent him--after the chambermaid had been satisfied, and the
waiter had been paid, and boots had had his fees, and the porter had
claimed more than his due, and, in short, all the exactions of an inn
had been played off upon him in succession--that did not prevent him,
when fairly rolling away toward the top of the Haymarket, from gazing
out upon the scene around him with a sufficient degree of open-eyed
curiosity to make the waterman stick his tongue into his cheek and
mentally denominate him "_a raw_."

It may be necessary to inform the unlearned reader, that the sun
rises, in the end of August, a few minutes after five in the morning,
and at the time I speak of the great luminary was pouring a flood of
radiance through the loaded air of the vast city, filling the long
empty perspective of the streets with the golden mistiness of the
morning light. Closed within the dull boards which defend the precious
wares of many a careful tradesman from the cosmopolite fingers of the
liberal Many, the shops exhibited nothing but the names and
occupations of their various owners; but the wide streets, with all
their irregular buildings, in the broad light and shade, were not
without beauty of their own peculiar kind, distinct from all the
mighty associations connected with their existence.

The coach rolled at the statute pace along Piccadilly, unobstructed by
any thing, and, indeed, unencountered by any thing but two slow market
carts, wending heavily toward Covent Garden, and another fac-simile of
itself, just overcoming--in order to take up some other early
passenger--the _vis inertiæ_ which had held it on the straw-littered
stand for the last hour. In the Haymarket, however, the progression
was more difficult; for there already had congregated many a loaded
cart, the drivers of which, as usual, had, with skillful zeal,
contrived to place them as a regular fortification, obstructing every
step of the way. Gin and purl, too, were reeking up to the sky from
the various temples of the rosy god that line the west side of the
street; and, amidst the bargainings of some early dealers, and the
pæans of the gin-drinkers, no one attended to the objurgations of the
embarrassed coachmen. Nevertheless, all these difficulties were at
length removed by one means or another; and Cockspur-street opened
wide before the traveler, exposing at the end, black with the smoke of
fires innumerable, the famous statue and the girthless horse. On one
side, wide and open, lay Whitehall, with all those offices, whence
many a time has issued the destiny of the world; on the other hand,
dark and dingy, wound away the Strand, with the house of the Percys
maintaining still the last aspect of a feudal dwelling to be found in
London. The King's Mews, on which a violating hand had hardly yet been
laid, occupied all the space to the left; and the flaming ensign of
the Golden Cross, stuck up in front of a tall, narrow-fronted house,
told that the place of many coaches was before the traveler's eyes.

He found, on alighting, that he had arrived at least ten minutes
before the time; and after having been cheated, as usual, by the
hackney-coachman, and gazed about the dull, desolate yard, shut in by
the high houses round, in the far shadows of which stood two or three
red, blue, and yellow vehicles, all unpacked and unhorsed, he once
more sauntered out through the low-browed arch which gave admission to
the court, and amused himself with the wider scene exhibited by the
street.

At that hour, one-half of Murillo's pictures find living
representatives in the streets of London; and when the young traveler
had moralized for a minute or two on some groups of beggar-boys
playing round the statue--had marked the sage and solemn pace with
which an elderly waterman brought forth his breakfast to a coachman on
the stand--and had listened to the Solon-like sayings of each upon the
weather and the state of the nation--he was looking back to see
whether the coming of the coach was hopeless, when the rushing noise
of rapid wheels caught his ear, and he turned his eyes in the
direction of the sound.

If people would but remark, they would find that they have
presentiments of little events a thousand times more often than they
have presentiments of great ones; and the feeling of the gallant
Nelson was not more strong, that the sun of Trafalgar was the last
that was destined to shine upon his glory, than was at that moment the
conviction of the young traveler that those rolling wheels were about
to bring him a companion for the stage-coach. Nor, let me tell you,
gentle reader, is it a matter of small importance, who is to be
brought in such close contact with one for the next ten hours. What is
life but a chain of those brief portions of eternity which man calls
hours, so inseparably linked together that the first and the last, and
every link throughout the series, have a mutual dependence and
connection with each other! Oh, let no one despise an hour! It is
fully enough to change dynasties, and overthrow empires--to make or
mar a fortune--to win high renown, or stain a noble name--to end our
being, or to fix our destiny here and hereafter, in time and through
eternity. So awful a thing is one hour--ay, one moment of active
being!

The companion of the three hundred and sixty-fifth part of one out of
seventy years, is a person to whom we may well attach some importance;
and the young traveler looked with no small eagerness to see who was
about to fill that station in relation to himself. The first thing
that his eyes fell upon, as he turned round, was a dark-brown
cabriolet, whirled along with the speed of lightning, by a tall bay
horse, full of blood and action, and covered with harness, which,
though somewhat elaborate and evidently costly, was guarded by
scrupulous good taste from being gaudy. Behind the vehicle appeared a
smart, active boy in groom's apparel, but with no distinctive livery
to designate him as the tiger of Colonel this, or the Earl of that,
though a cockade in his hat told that his master pretended either to
military or naval rank. Where the young traveler stood, the appearance
of the driver was not to be discerned; but, from the style of the
whole turn-out, he began to doubt that his anticipations in regard to
their approaching companionship were fallacious, when, dashing up to
the pavement, the horse was suddenly drawn up, the groom sprang to the
head, and the person within at length made his appearance.

He was a young man of about seven-and-twenty, tall, and rather
gracefully than strongly made; but still with a breadth of chest, and
a sort of firm setting on his feet, which spoke a greater degree of
personal strength than appeared at a casual glance. His clothes were
all of that peculiar cut which combines the most decided adherence to
the prevailing fashion, with a very slight touch of its extravagance.
Every thing, however, in the whole of his apparel, was in good
keeping, as the painters call it; and though the colors that appeared
therein were such as no one but a man of rank and station in society
would have dared to wear, the general hue of the whole was dark.

"He's a dandy!" thought the young traveler, with a somewhat
contemptuous curl of the lip, as the other descended from the
cabriolet; but the moment after, hearing him bid the boy tell Swainson
not to forget to give Brutus a ball on Wednesday night--and to walk
Miss Liddy for an hour twice every day in the park, he concluded that
he was a gentleman horse-jockey--a thing, in his unsophisticated
ideas, equally detestable with a dandy. Scarcely had he come to this
conclusion--and his conclusions, be it remarked, were formed very
quickly--when the stranger strode rapidly past him. The cabriolet
drove away, and its owner, with a quantity of glossy black hair
escaping from under his hat, and mingling with whiskers more glossy
still--entered the inn-yard, and proceeded to the coach-office.

The other traveler followed, in hopes of seeing some signs of
approaching departure; and, as he did so, he heard the reply of the
book-keeper to something which the owner of the cabriolet had asked.
"No room outside, sir;--very sorry, indeed--got our full number,"--he
had got three more, by the way--"plenty of room inside. That 'ere
gentleman's going inside, 'cause he can't get room out."

"Well, inside be it then," replied the other.

The book-keeper began to write. "What name, sir?"

"Burrel!" replied the stranger.

"Any luggage?"

"None," answered Burrel.

"One pound, ten shillings, and sixpence, sir, if you please!" said the
book-keeper; and, as Burrel paid the money, the coachman's cry of
"Now, gentlemen, if you please!" sounded through the yard.

In another minute the horses were dashing through that antique and
abominable arch, which, in days of yore, gave egress and regress to
the Golden Cross, while Burrel and the other traveler, seated side by
side, held their breath as the rough vehicle clattered over the London
stones. It has often been remarked, that it is wonderful how much
shaking together two Englishmen require before they speak to each
other; and, in setting out from a town like London, there is scarcely
an individual who has not too much to think of--either in parting from
well-loved friends--in quitting scenes of pleasure or of pain--in
self-congratulations on escaping from smoke and noise--in anticipation
of quiet and repose, of joyful meetings, and smiles of welcome--not to
court a few minutes' calm reflection, as they leave behind them that
great misty den of feelings and events. Our two travelers then leaned
back in their respective corners, without the interchange of a
word--the one, Burrel, apparently buried in deep thought; and the
other too proud, if not too shy, to begin any conversation himself,
even had he not had memories enough in his bosom to furnish him, also,
with food for meditation. Such, however, he had; and--seeing that his
companion appeared wrapped up in that sort of gentlemanly reserve
which so often covers over a man's eyes, ears, and understanding, as
he goes through life, and leaves him, like the Grand Lama, with
nothing to speculate upon but his own perfections--the younger
traveler gave way also to his thoughts, and, ere they had reached
Brent