FORGERY, A TALE. CHAPTER I. THE DAWN OF LIFE. "Here be all the pleasures That fancy can beget on youthful thoughts, MILTON. ROGER MORTIMER, the son of a gentleman of ancient family and fair possessions in the county of Bedford, was born in 1792, at his father's house there. He had not any brother, but an only sister, a year younger than himself, was the companion in whom he delighted, sharing by turns the gay and sad hours of his infancy. Mr. Mortimer, to other traits of a character without blemish and held in general repute, added that of an inviolable attachment to his estate, where he had long resided amidst the most fervent tokens of popular favour. He could never be prevailed upon to imitate the curiosity of his neighbours and countrymen, who, availing themselves of the peace of 1814, long revelled in boundless continental excursions. He heard without emotion of the spires of Saint Petersburg, the broad streets of the newly risen Moscow, the crowded fair of Dantzic, and the noble halls of the monarch of Austria. With equal indifference did he receive the accounts of Italian, Swiss, and Flemish adventurers; and neither yielded to impatience nor ambition, when assailed at all points by the universal guests of Paris. Mrs. Mortimer, indeed, is said once or twice to have urged the "home tour," on behalf more, as she devoutly declared, of their son Roger, than her own inclinations; and finding that hope unavailing, to have pleaded for "Paris, and only Paris;" but her husband, though passing kind, was inexorable. A habitual deafness of the right ear contributed not a little to this inflexible composure. Yet, although proof against the attractions of foreign capitals, and the blandishments of continental society, Mr. Mortimer was an efficient magistrate in his neighbourhood, and maintained an extensive acquaintance amongst the gentry of his county. It was neither through ignorance nor bigotry, that he preferred the circle of his friends and tenants at home, to the brilliant coteries of distant lands. It may be easily conceived, that Roger, the only son of this respectable family, was no common favourite. He received the rudiments of his education according to the discipline of modern tactics, that is to say, without stick, or rod, or corporal chastisement. His mother too, the patroness of Mrs. William's spelling, of Le Noir, and of Hamilton, directed the early advances of her son's literature in conformity with those improvements. A struggle (if a harmless discussion between her husband and herself could be called such) took place on the subject of a public school. Mrs. Mortimer disliked fagging, and verses, and effrontery; the father of Roger, on the contrary, justified the first, approved the second, and gave his unqualified approbation to the last. Young Mortimer, in the end, was sent to Eton; for the lady, in this instance, yielded to the force of precedent and the importunity of her lord, although the urgent solicitations of the boy were thought to have had the most cogent effect towards the withdrawing of her opposition. Eton, however, had but few charms for a disciple of the Hamiltonian system; and Roger, finding that the Roscii in that seminary of "the world's great ways" were the idols of Parnassus, betook himself to more active schemes, and became the very head and chief of all novelties and amusements. Doctor Keate, a man of sufficient erudition, was then the principal master, and his occasional personal visitations were the only means of recalling Roger to his senses, amidst an universal course of whim and dissipation. Boyhood and whipping being at an end, Roger Mortimer, consistently with his father's plan, left home for Oxford, where the unrestrained gaiety of his disposition broke forth in excesses which, although not fatal to his honour as a man, added little to his reputation for learning or application. He became the wild, thoughtless youth, whose joyous and generous sallies were wont to delight his audience, but who, alas! was too soon the first to experience their desertion, when the terrors of the college menaced his unruly career. But he was not vicious, nor a rebel against the government of the university; so that while his errors did not escape censure, he never risked the higher penalty of expulsion. Nor could it be expected that one so giddy and destitute of ambition should have been a "first class man ;" indeed, it was rather a matter of surprise, looking to the increased toil of the academical examinations, that he should have summoned industry enough to have succeeded in attaining to the ordinary honours. We follow him to his home in Bedfordshire, clothed with his hardly-earned degree, and impatient to gain his father's consent to a tour on the continent. At this critical season, however, Mr. Mortimer died. This accident happened through apoplexy, it was said, though the physicians were unable to agree amongst themselves as to the exact cause of their prtient's decease, the debate being long, and even loud, after their departure from the scene of mortality. However this may be, the head of the family was cut off in the vigour of life, without even the respite of a day between the interval of illness and death, and so suddenly had he been called away, that his worldly concerns remained unsettled. Dying thus without a will, Mr. Mortimer left Byrdwood Hall and its fair acres at the entire disposal and discretion of his son Roger, and his widow and daughter depended on the meager pittance which the law would award, and the kindness of the heir assign them. This was the dawn of Roger Mortimer's life, and it is from this point that we begin our present history. The newness of his condition, the estimation in which his father's memory was held, the already won popularity which descended upon him, were attractions which for some time determined the young land-owner to walk in the steps of his parent. He advocated the delights and advantages of a residence at home, went round to the dwellings of his tenants in person, urged (as his father had done before him) the appointment of district committees to inspect the condition of the poor, to repress imposture, and detect extravagance, and even devoted himself to the recommendation of the late Mr. Mortimer's favourite idea of establishing perpetual tribunals for the trial of all petty offences. “There would then," that worthy gentleman was wont to say, "be no more crowded gaols; there would be far fewer reputed thieves; and many a misguided boy would be returned instantly to his family with a punishment proportioned to his offence, while the innocent would cease to lie for months in profligate and expensive prisons, at the mercy of perjured or mistaken witnesses." Such sentiments were deemed harmless crotchets in the county; but the tread of vice was now becoming so open and unflinching, that the most idle theory found ready listeners in those who but a short time since would have readily signed a certificate of insanity against the authors of it. But it was not only through the acts of his ancestor, and the policy which dictated his own early footsteps, that the new possessor of Byrdwood Hall had reason to think himself fortunate; every possible circumstance had united to make his dayspring of life peculiarly auspicious. The property on which he lived, though small, was unincumbered as far as he knew, by the ruinous seals of a mortgage deed, and safe in his own hands from the all-devouring zeal of agency. Though the acres were neither thousands nor tens of thousands, all were rich, partaking of the best qualities both of water and of soil. Those too who cultivated them were equally fortunate with their owner; they were tithe-free, and emancipated, through the unwearied industry of the neighbouring gentry, from the burden of rates which at one time had sadly weighed on that part of the country. The luxurious and unseasonable feasting of the parochial dignitaries had long since yielded to a more firm and frugal distribution of those levies, which the farmer com |