or and
disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to
sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That
must be a strange feeling, when a day of our life comes
and we say, "To-morrow, success or failure won't
matter much, and the sun will rise, and all the myriads of
mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, but
I shall be out of the turmoil."

So there came one morning and sunrise when all the
world got up and set about its various works and
pleasures, with the exception of old John Sedley, who was not
to fight with fortune, or to hope or scheme any more,
but to go and take up a quiet and utterly unknown
residence in a churchyard at Brompton by the side of
his old wife.

Major Dobbin, Jos, and Georgy followed his remains
to the grave, in a black cloth coach.  Jos came on
purpose from the Star and Garter at Richmond, whither he
retreated after the deplorable event.  He did not care
to remain in the house, with the--under the circumstances,
you understand.  But Emmy stayed and did her
duty as usual.  She was bowed down by no especial grief,
and rather solemn than sorrowful.  She prayed that her
own end might be as calm and painless, and thought
with trust and reverence of the words which she had
heard from her father during his illness, indicative of his
faith, his resignation, and his future hope.

Yes, I think that will be the better ending of the two,
after all.  Suppose you are particularly rich and well-to-
do and say on that last day, "I am very rich; I am
tolerably well known; I have lived all my life in the best
society, and thank Heaven, come of a most respectable
family.  I have served my King and country with honour.
I was in Parliament for several years, where, I may say,
my speeches were listened to and pretty well received.
I don't owe any man a shilling:  on the contrary, I lent
my old college friend, Jack Lazarus, fifty pounds, for which
my executors will not press him.  I leave my daughters
with ten thousand pounds apiece--very good portions
for girls; I bequeath my plate and furniture, my house in
Baker Street, with a handsome jointure, to my widow for
her life; and my landed property, besides money in the
funds, and my cellar of well-selected wine in Baker Street,
to my son.  I leave twenty pound a year to my valet; and
I defy any man after I have gone to find anything against
my character." Or suppose, on the other hand, your
swan sings quite a different sort of dirge and you say,
"I am a poor blighted, disappointed old fellow, and have
made an utter failure through life.  I was not endowed
either with brains or with good fortune, and confess
that I have committed a hundred mistakes and blunders.
I own to having forgotten my duty many a time.  I can't
pay what I owe.  On my last bed I lie utterly helpless
and humble, and I pray forgiveness for my weakness and
throw myself, with a contrite heart, at the feet of the
Divine Mercy." Which of these two speeches, think
you, would be the best oration for your own funeral?
Old Sedley made the last; and in that humble frame of
mind, and holding by the hand of his daughter, life and
disappointment and vanity sank away from under him.

"You see," said old Osborne to George, "what comes
of merit, and industry, and judicious speculations, and
that.  Look at me and my banker's account.  Look at your
poor Grandfather Sedley and his failure.  And yet he was
a better man than I was, this day twenty years--a better
man, I should say, by ten thousand pound."

Beyond these people and Mr. Clapp's family, who
came over from Brompton to pay a visit of condolence,
not a single soul alive ever cared a penny piece about
old John Sedley, or remembered the existence of such a
person.

When old Osborne first heard from his friend Colonel
Buckler (as little Georgy had already informed us) how
distinguished an officer Major Dobbin was, he exhibited
a great deal of scornful incredulity and expressed his
surprise how ever such a feller as that should possess
either brains or reputation.  But he heard of the Major's
fame from various members of his society.  Sir William
Dobbin had a great opinion of his son and narrated
many stories illustrative of the Major's learning, valour,
and estimation in the world's opinion.  Finally, his name
appeared in the lists of one or two great parties of the
nobility, and this circumstance had a prodigious effect
upon the old aristocrat of Russell Square.

The Major's position, as guardian to Georgy, whose
possession had been ceded to his grandfather, rendered
some meetings between the two gentlemen inevitable;
and it was in one of these that old Osborne, a keen man
of business, looking into the Major's accounts with his
ward and the boy's mother, got a hint, which staggered
him very much, and at once pained and pleased him,
that it was out of William Dobbin's own pocket that a
part of the fund had been supplied upon which the
poor widow and the child had subsisted.

When pressed upon the point, Dobbin, who could not
tell lies, blushed and stammered a good deal and finally
confessed.  "The marriage," he said (at which his
interlocutor's face grew dark) "was very much my doing.  I
thought my poor friend had gone so far that retreat from
his engagement would have been dishonour to him and
death to Mrs. Osborne, and I could do no less, when she
was left without resources, than give what money I could
spare to maintain her."

"Major D.," Mr. Osborne said, looking hard at him and
turning very red too--"you did me a great injury; but
give me leave to tell you, sir, you are an honest feller.
There's my hand, sir, though I little thought that my
flesh and blood was living on you--" and the pair shook
hands, with great confusion on Major Dobbin's part, thus
found out in his act of charitable hypocrisy.

He strove to soften the old man and reconcile him
towards his son's memory.  "He was such a noble fellow,"
he said, "that all of us loved him, and would have done
anything for him.  I, as a young man in those days, was
flattered beyond measure by his preference for me, and
was more pleased to be seen in his company than in
that of the Commander-in-Chief.  I never saw his equal
for pluck and daring and all the qualities of a soldier";
and Dobbin told the old father as many stories as he
could remember regarding the gallantry and achievements
of his son.  "And Georgy is so like him," the
Major added.

"He's so like him that he makes me tremble sometimes,"
the grandfather said.

On one or two evenings the Major came to dine with
Mr. Osborne (it was during the time of the sickness of
Mr. Sedley), and as the two sat together in the evening
after dinner, all their talk was about the departed hero.
The father boasted about him according to his wont,
glorifying himself in recounting his son's feats and
gallantry, but his mood was at any rate better and more
charitable than that in which he had been disposed until
now to regard the poor fellow; and the Christian heart of
the kind Major was pleased at these symptoms of
returning peace and good-will.  On the second evening old
Osborne called Dobbin William, just as he used to do at
the time when Dobbin and George were boys together,
and the honest gentleman was pleased by that mark of
reconciliation .

On the next day at breakfast, when Miss Osborne,
with the asperity of her age and character, ventured to
make some remark reflecting slightingly upon the Major's
appearance or behaviour--the master of the house
interrupted her.  "You'd have been glad enough to git him
for yourself, Miss O.  But them grapes are sour.  Ha!  ha!
Major William is a fine feller."

"That he is, Grandpapa," said Georgy approvingly;
and going up close to the old gentleman, he took a hold
of his large grey whiskers, and laughed in his face
good-humouredly, and kissed him.  And he told the story at
night to his mother, who fully agreed with the boy.
"Indeed he is," she said.  "Your dear father always said so.
He is one of the best and most upright of men." Dobbin
happened to drop in very soon after this conversation,
which made Amelia blush perhaps, and the young
scapegrace increased the confusion by telling Dobbin
the other part of the story.  "I say, Dob," he said, "there's
such an uncommon nice girl wants to marry you.  She's
plenty of tin; she wears a front; and she scolds the
servants from morning till night." "Who is it?" asked
Dobbin.
  "It's Aunt O.," the boy answered.  "Grandpapa said
so.  And I say, Dob, how prime it would be to have you
for my uncle." Old Sedley's quavering voice from the
next room at this moment weakly called for Amelia, and
the laughing ended.

That old Osborne's mind was changing was pretty clear.
He asked George about his uncle sometimes, and laughed
at the boy's imitation of the way in which Jos said
"God-bless-my-soul" and gobbled his soup.  Then he said,
"It's not respectful, sir, of you younkers to be imitating of
your relations.  Miss O., when you go out adriving
to-day, leave my card upon Mr. Sedley, do you hear?
There's no quarrel betwigst me and him anyhow."

The card was returned, and Jos and the Major were
asked to dinner--to a dinner the most splendid and
stupid that perhaps ever Mr. Osborne gave; every inch
of the family plate was exhibited, and the best company
was asked.  Mr. Sedley took down Miss O.  to dinner,
and she was very gracious to him; whereas she
hardly spoke to the Major, who sat apart from her, and
by the side of Mr. Osborne, very timid.  Jos said, with
great solemnity, it was the best turtle soup he had ever
tasted in his life, and asked Mr. Osborne where he got his
Madeira.

"It is some of Sedley's wine," whispered the butler to
his master.  "I've had it a long time, and paid a good
figure for it, too," Mr. Osborne said aloud to his guest,
and then whispered to his right-hand neighbour how
he had got it "at the old chap's sale."

More than once he asked the Major about--about Mrs.
George Osborne--a theme on which the Major could be
very eloquent when he chose.  He told Mr. Osborne of
her sufferings--of her passionate attachment to her
husband, whose memory she worshipped still--of the tender
and dutiful manner in which she had supported her
parents, and given up her boy, when it seemed to her her
duty to do so.  "You don't know what she endured, sir,"
said honest Dobbin with a tremor in his voice, "and I
hope and trust you will be reconciled to her.  If she
took your son away from you, she gave hers to you;
and however much you loved your George, depend on it,
she loved hers ten times more."

"By God, you are a good feller, sir," was all Mr. Os-
borne said.  It had never struck him that the widow would
feel any pain at parting from the boy, or that his having
a fine fortune could grieve her.  A reconciliation was
announced as speedy and inevitable, and Amelia's heart
already began to beat at the notion of the awful meeting
with George's father.

It was never, however, destined to take place.  Old
Sedley's lingering illness and death supervened, after
which a meeting was for some time impossible.  That
catastrophe and other events may have worked upon Mr.
Osborne.  He was much shaken of late, and aged, and his
mind was working inwardly.  He had sent for his lawyers,
and probably changed something in his will.  The medical
man who looked in pronounced him shaky, agitated, and
talked of a little blood and the seaside; but he took
neither of these remedies.

One day when he should have come down to breakfast,
his servant missing him, went into his dressing-room
and found him lying at the foot of the dressing-table in a
fit.  Miss Osborne was apprised; the doctors were sent
for; Georgy stopped away from school; the bleeders
and cuppers came.  Osborne partially regained cognizance,
but never could speak again, though he tried
dreadfully once or twice, and in four days he died.  The
doctors went down, and the undertaker's men went up
the stairs, and all the shutters were shut towards the
garden in Russell Square.  Bullock rushed from the City
in a hurry.  "How much money had he left to that boy?
Not half, surely? Surely share and share alike between
the three?" It was an agitating moment.

What was it that poor old man tried once or twice
in vain to say? I hope it was that he wanted to see
Amelia and be reconciled before he left the world to one
dear and faithful wife of his son:  it was most likely
that, for his will showed that the hatred which he had
so long cherished had gone out of his heart.

They found in the pocket of his dressing-gown the
letter with the great red seal which George had written
him from Waterloo.  He had looked at the other papers
too, relative to his son, for the key of the box in which
he kept them was also in his pocket, and it was found
the seals and envelopes had been broken--very likely on
the night before the seizure--when the butler had taken
him tea into his study, and found him reading in the
great red family Bible.

When the will was opened, it was found that half the
property was left to George, and the remainder between
the two sisters.  Mr. Bullock to continue, for their joint
benefit, the affairs of the commercial house, or to go out,
as he thought fit.  An annuity of five hundred pounds,
chargeable on George's property, was left to his mother,
"the widow of my beloved son, George Osborne," who
was to resume the guardianship of the boy.

"Major William Dobbin, my beloved son's friend," was
appointed executor; "and as out of his kindness and
bounty, and with his own private funds, he maintained
my grandson and my son's widow, when they were
otherwise without means of support" (the testator went on
to say) "I hereby thank him heartily for his love and
regard for them, and beseech him to accept such a sum
as may be sufficient to purchase his commission as a
Lieutenant-Colonel, or to be disposed of in any way he
may think fit."

When Amelia heard that her father-in-law was
reconciled to her, her heart melted, and she was grateful
for the fortune left to her.  But when she heard how
Georgy was restored to her, and knew how and by
whom, and how it was William's bounty that supported
her in poverty, how it was William who gave her her
husband and her son--oh, then she sank on her knees,
and prayed for blessings on that constant and kind heart;
she bowed down and humbled herself, and kissed the
feet, as it were, of that beautiful and generous affection.

And gratitude was all that she had to pay back for
such admirable devotion and benefits--only gratitude!  If
she thought of any other return, the image of George
stood up out of the grave and said, "You are mine,
and mine only, now and forever."

William knew her feelings:  had he not passed his
whole life in divining them?

When the nature of Mr. Osborne's will became known
to the world, it was edifying to remark how Mrs. George
Osborne rose in the estimation of the people forming her
circle of acquaintance.  The servants of Jos's establishment,
who used to question her humble orders and say
they would "ask Master" whether or not they could obey,
never thought now of that sort of appeal.  The cook
forgot to sneer at her shabby old gowns (which, indeed,
were quite eclipsed by that lady's finery when she was
dressed to go to church of a Sunday evening), the others
no longer grumbled at the sound of her bell, or delayed
to answer that summons.  The coachman, who grumbled
that his 'osses should be brought out and his
carriage made into an hospital for that old feller and
Mrs. O., drove her with the utmost alacrity now, and
trembling lest he should be superseded by Mr. Osborne's
coachman, asked "what them there Russell Square
coachmen knew about town, and whether they was fit to sit
on a box before a lady?" Jos's friends, male and female,
suddenly became interested about Emmy, and cards
of condolence multiplied on her hall table.  Jos himself,
who had looked on her as a good-natured harmless
pauper, to whom it was his duty to give victuals and
shelter, paid her and the rich little boy, his nephew, the
greatest respect--was anxious that she should have
change and amusement after her troubles and trials,
"poor dear girl"--and began to appear at the breakfast-
table, and most particularly to ask how she would like
to dispose of the day.

In her capacity of guardian to Georgy, she, with the
consent of the Major, her fellow-trustee, begged Miss
Osborne to live in the Russell Square house as long as
ever she chose to dwell there; but that lady, with thanks,
declared that she never could think of remaining alone
in that melancholy mansion, and departed in deep mourning
to Cheltenham, with a couple of her old domestics.
The rest were liberally paid and dismissed, the faithful
old butler, whom Mrs. Osborne proposed to retain,
resigning and preferring to invest his savings in a public-
house, where, let us hope, he was not unprosperous.
Miss Osborne not choosing to live in Russell Square, Mrs.
Osborne also, after consultation, declined to occupy the
gloomy old mansion there.  The house was dismantled;
the rich furniture and effects, the awful chandeliers and
dreary blank mirrors packed away and hidden, the rich
rosewood drawing-room suite was muffled in straw, the
carpets were rolled up and corded, the small select
library of well-bound books was stowed into two wine-
chests, and the whole paraphernalia rolled away in
several enormous vans to the Pantechnicon, where they
were to lie until Georgy's majority.  And the great heavy
dark plate-chests went off to Messrs.  Stumpy and Rowdy,
to lie in the cellars of those eminent bankers until the
same period should arrive.

One day Emmy, with George in her hand and clad in
deep sables, went to visit the deserted mansion which she
had not entered since she was a girl.  The place in front
was littered with straw where the vans had been laden
and rolled off.  They went into the great blank rooms, the
walls of which bore the marks where the pictures and
mirrors had hung.  Then they went up the great blank
stone staircases into the upper rooms, into that where
grandpapa died, as George said in a whisper, and then
higher still into George's own room.  The boy was still
clinging by her side, but she thought of another besides
him.  She knew that it had been his father's room as well
as his own.

She went up to one of the open windows (one of
those at which she used to gaze with a sick heart when
the child was first taken from her), and thence as she
looked out she could see, over the trees of Russell Square,
the old house in which she herself was born, and where
she had passed so many happy days of sacred youth.
They all came back to her, the pleasant holidays,
the kind faces, the careless, joyful past times, and the
long pains and trials that had since cast her down.
She thought of these and of the man who had been her
constant protector, her good genius, her sole benefactor,
her tender and generous friend.

"Look here, Mother," said Georgy, "here's a G.O.
scratched on the glass with a diamond, I never saw it
before, I never did it."

"It was your father's room long before you were born,
George," she said, and she blushed as she kissed the
boy.

She was very silent as they drove back to Richmond,
where they had taken a temporary house:  where the
smiling lawyers used to come bustling over to see her (and
we may be sure noted the visit in the bill):  and where of
course there was a room for Major Dobbin too, who
rode over frequently, having much business to transact
on behalf of his little ward.

Georgy at this time was removed from Mr. Veal's on
an unlimited holiday, and that gentleman was engaged
to prepare an inscription for a fine marble slab, to be
placed up in the Foundling under the monument of
Captain George Osborne.

The female Bullock, aunt of Georgy, although
despoiled by that little monster of one-half of the sum
which she expected from her father, nevertheless showed
her charitableness of spirit by being reconciled to the
mother and the boy.  Roehampton is not far from
Richmond, and one day the chariot, with the golden bullocks
emblazoned on the panels, and the flaccid children within,
drove to Amelia's house at Richmond; and the Bullock
family made an irruption into the garden, where Amelia
was reading a book, Jos was in an arbour placidly
dipping strawberries into wine, and the Major in one of
his Indian jackets was giving a back to Georgy, who
chose to jump over him.  He went over his head and
bounded into the little advance of Bullocks, with
immense black bows in their hats, and huge black sashes,
accompanying their mourning mamma.

"He is just of the age for Rosa," the fond parent
thought, and glanced towards that dear child, an
unwholesome little miss of seven years of age.

"Rosa, go and kiss your dear cousin," Mrs. Frederick
said.  "Don't you know me, George? I am your aunt."

"I know you well enough," George said; "but I don't
like kissing, please"; and he retreated from the obedient
caresses of his cousin.

"Take me to your dear mamma, you droll child," Mrs.
Frederick said, and those ladies accordingly met, after
an absence of more than fifteen years.  During Emmy's
cares and poverty the other had never once thought
about coming to see her, but now that she was decently
prosperous in the world, her sister-in-law came to her as
a matter of course.

So did numbers more.  Our old friend, Miss Swartz, and
her husband came thundering over from Hampton Court,
with flaming yellow liveries, and was as impetuously fond
of Amelia as ever.  Miss Swartz would have liked her
always if she could have seen her.  One must do her that
justice.  But, que voulez vous?--in this vast town one
has not the time to go and seek one's friends; if they
drop out of the rank they disappear, and we march on
without them.  Who is ever missed in Vanity Fair?

But so, in a word, and before the period of grief for
Mr. Osborne's death had subsided, Emmy found herself
in the centre of a very genteel circle indeed, the
members of which could not conceive that anybody
belonging to it was not very lucky.  There was scarce one
of the ladies that hadn't a relation a Peer, though the
husband might be a drysalter in the City.  Some of the
ladies were very blue and well informed, reading Mrs.
Somerville and frequenting the Royal Institution; others
were severe and Evangelical, and held by Exeter Hall.
Emmy, it must be owned, found herself entirely at a loss in
the midst of their clavers, and suffered woefully on the
one or two occasions on which she was compelled to
accept Mrs. Frederick Bullock's hospitalities.  That lady
persisted in patronizing her and determined most graciously
to form her.  She found Amelia's milliners for her and
regulated her household and her manners.  She drove
over constantly from Roehampton and entertained her
friend with faint fashionable fiddle-faddle and feeble
Court slip-slop.  Jos liked to hear it, but the Major used
to go off growling at the appearance of this woman, with
her twopenny gentility.  He went to sleep under Frederick
Bullock's bald head, after dinner, at one of the banker's
best parties (Fred was still anxious that the balance of
the Osborne property should be transferred from Stumpy
and Rowdy's to them), and whilst Amelia, who did not
know Latin, or who wrote the last crack article in the
Edinburgh, and did not in the least deplore, or
otherwise, Mr. Peel's late extraordinary tergiversation on the
fatal Catholic Relief Bill, sat dumb amongst the ladies in
the grand drawing-room, looking out upon velvet lawns,
trim gravel walks, and glistening hot-houses.

"She seems good-natured but insipid," said Mrs.
Rowdy; "that Major seems to be particularly epris."

"She wants ton sadly," said Mrs. Hollyock.  "My dear
creature, you never will be able to form her."

"She is dreadfully ignorant or indifferent," said Mrs.
Glowry with a voice as if from the grave, and a sad
shake of the head and turban.  "I asked her if she thought
that it was in 1836, according to Mr. Jowls, or in 1839,
according to Mr. Wapshot, that the Pope was to fall:
and she said--'Poor Pope!  I hope not--What has he
done?' "

"She is my brother's widow, my dear friends," Mrs.
Frederick replied, "and as such I think we're all bound to
give her every attention and instruction on entering into
the world.  You may fancy there can be no MERCENARY
motives in those whose DISAPPOINTMENTS are well known."

"That poor dear Mrs. Bullock," said Rowdy to Hollyock,
as they drove away together--"she is always scheming
and managing.  She wants Mrs. Osborne's account
to be taken from our house to hers--and the way in
which she coaxes that boy and makes him sit by that
blear-eyed little Rosa is perfectly ridiculous."

"I wish Glowry was choked with her Man of Sin and
her Battle of Armageddon," cried the other, and the
carriage rolled away over Putney Bridge.

But this sort of society was too cruelly genteel for
Emmy, and all jumped for joy when a foreign tour was
proposed.



CHAPTER LXII


Am Rhein

The above everyday events had occurred, and a few
weeks had passed, when on one fine morning, Parliament
being over, the summer advanced, and all the good
company in London about to quit that city for their annual
tour in search of pleasure or health, the Batavier steamboat
left the Tower-stairs laden with a goodly company of English
fugitives.  The quarter-deck awnings were up, and the
benches and gangways crowded with scores of rosy children,
bustling nursemaids; ladies in the prettiest pink
bonnets and summer dresses; gentlemen in travelling caps
and linen-jackets, whose mustachios had just begun to
sprout for the ensuing tour; and stout trim old veterans
with starched neckcloths and neat-brushed hats, such as
have invaded Europe any time since the conclusion of the
war, and carry the national Goddem into every city of
the Continent.  The congregation of hat-boxes, and
Bramah desks, and dressing-cases was prodigious.  There
were jaunty young Cambridge-men travelling with their
tutor, and going for a reading excursion to Nonnenwerth
or Konigswinter; there were Irish gentlemen, with the
most dashing whiskers and jewellery, talking about
horses incessantly, and prodigiously polite to the young
ladies on board, whom, on the contrary, the Cambridge
lads and their pale-faced tutor avoided with maiden
coyness; there were old Pall Mall loungers bound for Ems
and Wiesbaden and a course of waters to clear off the
dinners of the season, and a little roulette and trente-
et-quarante to keep the excitement going; there was old
Methuselah, who had married his young wife, with Captain
Papillon of the Guards holding her parasol and
guide-books; there was young May who was carrying off
his bride on a pleasure tour (Mrs. Winter that was, and
who had been at school with May's grandmother); there
was Sir John and my Lady with a dozen children, and
corresponding nursemaids; and the great grandee
Bareacres family that sat by themselves near the wheel,
stared at everybody, and spoke to no one.  Their
carriages, emblazoned with coronets and heaped with
shining imperials, were on the foredeck, locked in with a
dozen more such vehicles:  it was difficult to pass in and
out amongst them; and the poor inmates of the
fore-cabin had scarcely any space for locomotion.  These
consisted of a few magnificently attired gentlemen from
Houndsditch, who brought their own provisions, and
could have bought half the gay people in the grand
saloon; a few honest fellows with mustachios and portfolios,
who set to sketching before they had been half an hour
on board; one or two French femmes de chambre who
began to be dreadfully ill by the time the boat had
passed Greenwich; a groom or two who lounged in the
neighbourhood of the horse-boxes under their charge, or
leaned over the side by the paddle-wheels, and talked
about who was good for the Leger, and what they stood
to win or lose for the Goodwood cup.

All the couriers, when they had done plunging about
the ship and had settled their various masters in the
cabins or on the deck, congregated together and began to
chatter and smoke; the Hebrew gentlemen joining them
and looking at the carriages.  There was Sir John's great
carriage that would hold thirteen people; my Lord
Methuselah's carriage, my Lord Bareacres' chariot,
britzska, and fourgon, that anybody might pay for who liked.
It was a wonder how my Lord got the ready money to
pay for the expenses of the journey.  The Hebrew gentlemen
knew how he got it.  They knew what money his
Lordship had in his pocket at that instant, and what
interest he paid for it, and who gave it him.  Finally there
was a very neat, handsome travelling carriage, about
which the gentlemen speculated.

"A qui cette voiture la?" said one gentleman-courier
with a large morocco money-bag and ear-rings to another
with ear-rings and a large morocco money-bag.

"C'est a Kirsch je bense--je l'ai vu toute a l'heure--
qui brenoit des sangviches dans la voiture," said the
courier in a fine German French.

Kirsch emerging presently from the neighbourhood of
the hold, where he had been bellowing instructions
intermingled with polyglot oaths to the ship's men engaged
in secreting the passengers' luggage, came to give an
account of himself to his brother interpreters.  He
informed them that the carriage belonged to a Nabob from
Calcutta and Jamaica enormously rich, and with whom
he was engaged to travel; and at this moment a young
gentleman who had been warned off the bridge between
the paddle-boxes, and who had dropped thence on to the
roof of Lord Methuselah's carriage, from which he made
his way over other carriages and imperials until he had
clambered on to his own, descended thence and through
the window into the body of the carriage, to the applause
of the couriers looking on.

"Nous allons avoir une belle traversee, Monsieur
George," said the courier with a grin, as he lifted his
gold-laced cap.

"D-- your French," said the young gentleman, "where's
the biscuits, ay?" Whereupon Kirsch answered him in the
English language or in such an imitation of it as he could
command--for though he was familiar with all languages,
Mr. Kirsch was not acquainted with a single one, and
spoke all with indifferent volubility and incorrectness.

The imperious young gentleman who gobbled the
biscuits (and indeed it was time to refresh himself, for he
had breakfasted at Richmond full three hours before)
was our young friend George Osborne.  Uncle Jos and his
mamma were on the quarter-deck with a gentleman of
whom they used to see a good deal, and the four were
about to make a summer tour.

Jos was seated at that moment on deck under the
awning, and pretty nearly opposite to the Earl of
Bareacres and his family, whose proceedings absorbed
the Bengalee almost entirely.  Both the noble couple
looked rather younger than in the eventful year '15, when
Jos remembered to have seen them at Brussels (indeed,
he always gave out in India that he was intimately
acquainted with them).  Lady Bareacres' hair, which was
then dark, was now a beautiful golden auburn, whereas
Lord Bareacres' whiskers, formerly red, were at present
of a rich black with purple and green reflections in the
light.  But changed as they were, the movements of the
noble pair occupied Jos's mind entirely.  The presence of
a Lord fascinated him, and he could look at nothing else.

"Those people seem to interest you a good deal," said
Dobbin, laughing and watching him.  Amelia too laughed.
She was in a straw bonnet with black ribbons, and
otherwise dressed in mourning, but the little bustle and
holiday of the journey pleased and excited her, and she
looked particularly happy.

"What a heavenly day!" Emmy said and added, with
great originality, "I hope we shall have a calm passage."

Jos waved his hand, scornfully glancing at the same
time under his eyelids at the great folks opposite.  "If you
had made the voyages we have," he said, "you wouldn't
much care about the weather." But nevertheless, traveller
as he was, he passed the night direfully sick in his
carriage, where his courier tended him with brandy-and-
water and every luxury.

In due time this happy party landed at the quays of
Rotterdam, whence they were transported by another
steamer to the city of Cologne.  Here the carriage and
the family took to the shore, and Jos was not a little
gratified to see his arrival announced in the Cologne
newspapers as "Herr Graf Lord von Sedley nebst
Begleitung aus London." He had his court dress with him;
he had insisted that Dobbin should bring his regimental
paraphernalia; he announced that it was his intention to
be presented at some foreign courts, and pay his respects
to the Sovereigns of the countries which he honoured
with a visit.

Wherever the party stopped, and an opportunity was
offered, Mr. Jos left his own card and the Major's upon
"Our Minister." It was with great difficulty that he could
be restrained from putting on his cocked hat and tights
to wait upon the English consul at the Free City of
Judenstadt, when that hospitable functionary asked our
travellers to dinner.  He kept a journal of his voyage and
noted elaborately the defects or excellences of the various
inns at which he put up, and of the wines and dishes of
which he partook.

As for Emmy, she was very happy and pleased.  Dobbin
used to carry about for her her stool and sketch-book,
and admired the drawings of the good-natured little artist
as they never had been admired before.  She sat upon
steamers' decks and drew crags and castles, or she
mounted upon donkeys and ascended to ancient robber-
towers, attended by her two aides-de-camp, Georgy and
Dobbin.  She laughed, and the Major did too, at his droll
figure on donkey-back, with his long legs touching the
ground.  He was the interpreter for the party; having a
good military knowledge of the German language, and
he and the delighted George fought the campaigns of the
Rhine and the Palatinate.  In the course of a few weeks,
and by assiduously conversing with Herr Kirsch on the
box of the carriage, Georgy made prodigious advance in
the knowledge of High Dutch, and could talk to hotel
waiters and postilions in a way that charmed his mother
and amused his guardian.

Mr. Jos did not much engage in the afternoon
excursions of his fellow-travellers.  He slept a good deal
after dinner, or basked in the arbours of the pleasant
inn-gardens.  Pleasant Rhine gardens!  Fair scenes of peace
and sunshine--noble purple mountains, whose crests are
reflected in the magnificent stream--who has ever seen
you that has not a grateful memory of those scenes of
friendly repose and beauty? To lay down the pen and
even to think of that beautiful Rhineland makes one
happy.  At this time of summer evening, the cows are
trooping down from the hills, lowing and with their bells
tinkling, to the old town, with its old moats, and gates,
and spires, and chestnut-trees, with long blue shadows
stretching over the grass; the sky and the river below
flame in-crimson and gold; and the moon is already out,
looking pale towards the sunset.  The sun sinks behind
the great castle-crested mountains, the night falls suddenly,
the river grows darker and darker, lights quiver in it
from the windows in the old ramparts, and twinkle
peacefully in the villages under the hills on the opposite shore.

So Jos used to go to sleep a good deal with his bandanna
over his face and be very comfortable, and read all
the English news, and every word of Galignani's admirable newspaper (may the blessings of all Englishmen who
have ever been abroad rest on the founders and proprietors
of that piratical print!  ) and whether he woke or
slept, his friends did not very much miss him.  Yes, they
were very happy.  They went to the opera often of
evenings--to those snug, unassuming, dear old operas in the
German towns, where the noblesse sits and cries, and
knits stockings on the one side, over against the bourgeoisie
on the other; and His Transparency the Duke and his
Transparent family, all very fat and good-natured, come
and occupy the great box in the middle; and the pit is
full of the most elegant slim-waisted officers with straw-
coloured mustachios, and twopence a day on full pay.
Here it was that Emmy found her delight, and was
introduced for the first time to the wonders of Mozart and
Cimarosa.  The Major's musical taste has been before
alluded to, and his performances on the flute commended.
But perhaps the chief pleasure he had in these operas
was in watching Emmy's rapture while listening to them.
A new world of love and beauty broke upon her when
she was introduced to those divine compositions; this
lady had the keenest and finest sensibility, and how could
she be indifferent when she heard Mozart? The tender
parts of "Don Juan" awakened in her raptures so
exquisite that she would ask herself when she went to say
her prayers of a night whether it was not wicked to feel
so much delight as that with which "Vedrai Carino" and
"Batti Batti" filled her gentle little bosom? But the Major,
whom she consulted upon this head, as her theological
adviser (and who himself had a pious and reverent soul),
said that for his part, every beauty of art or nature made
him thankful as well as happy, and that the pleasure to
be had in listening to fine music, as in looking at the stars
in the sky, or at a beautiful landscape or picture, was a
benefit for which we might thank Heaven as sincerely as
for any other worldly blessing.  And in reply to some faint
objections of Mrs. Amelia's (taken from certain theological
works like the Washerwoman of Finchley Common
and others of that school, with which Mrs. Osborne had
been furnished during her life at Brompton) he told her
an Eastern fable of the Owl who thought that the
sunshine was unbearable for the eyes and that the
Nightingale was a most overrated bird.  "It is one's nature to
sing and the other's to hoot," he said, laughing, "and
with such a sweet voice as you have yourself, you must
belong to the Bulbul faction."

I like to dwell upon this period of her life and to think
that she was cheerful and happy.  You see, she has not
had too much of that sort of existence as yet, and has not
fallen in the way of means to educate her tastes or her
intelligence.  She has been domineered over hitherto by
vulgar intellects.  It is the lot of many a woman.  And as
every one of the dear sex is the rival of the rest of her
kind, timidity passes for folly in their charitable
judgments; and gentleness for dulness; and silence--which is
but timid denial of the unwelcome assertion of ruling
folks, and tacit protestantism--above all, finds no mercy
at the hands of the female Inquisition.  Thus, my dear and
civilized reader, if you and I were to find ourselves this
evening in a society of greengrocers, let us say, it is
probable that our conversation would not be brilliant; if, on
the other hand, a greengrocer should find himself at your
refined and polite tea-table, where everybody was saying
witty things, and everybody of fashion and repute tearing
her friends to pieces in the most delightful manner, it is
possible that the stranger would not be very talkative and
by no means interesting or interested.

And it must be remembered that this poor lady had
never met a gentleman in her life until this present
moment.  Perhaps these are rarer personages than some of
us think for.  Which of us can point out many such in his
circle--men whose aims are generous, whose truth is
constant, and not only constant in its kind but elevated
in its degree; whose want of meanness makes them
simple; who can look the world honestly in the face with
an equal manly sympathy for the great and the small?
We all know a hundred whose coats are very well made,
and a score who have excellent manners, and one or two
happy beings who are what they call in the inner circles,
and have shot into the very centre and bull's-eye of the
fashion; but of gentlemen how many? Let us take a little
scrap of paper and each make out his list.

My friend the Major I write, without any doubt, in
mine.  He had very long legs, a yellow face, and a slight
lisp, which at first was rather ridiculous.  But his thoughts
were just, his brains were fairly good, his life was honest
and pure, and his heart warm and humble.  He certainly
had very large hands and feet, which the two George
Osbornes used to caricature and laugh at; and their jeers
and laughter perhaps led poor little Emmy astray as to
his worth.  But have we not all been misled about our
heroes and changed our opinions a hundred times? Emmy,
in this happy time, found that hers underwent a very great
change in respect of the merits of the Major.

Perhaps it was the happiest time of both their lives,
indeed, if they did but know it--and who does? Which
of us can point out and say that was the culmination--
that was the summit of human joy? But at all events,
this couple were very decently contented, a