Chapter 33

Norfolk, for thee remains a heavy doom,
Which I with some unwillingness pronounce.

SHAKSPEARE.

The history of the unfortunate young man, who, after escaping all the
hazards and adventures of the passage was now so unexpectedly overtaken as
he was about to reach what he fancied an asylum, was no more than one of
those common-place tissue of events that lead, through vanity and
weakness, to crime. His father had held an office under the British
government. Marrying late, and leaving a son and daughter just issuing
into life at the time of his decease, the situation he had himself filled
had been given to the first, out of respect to the unwearied toil of a
faithful servant.

The young man was one of those who, without principles or high motives,
live only for vanity. Of prominent vices he had none, for there were no
salient points in his character on which to hang any quality of
sufficient boldness to encourage crime of that nature. Perhaps he owed his
ruin to the circumstance that he had a tolerable person, and was six feet
high, as much as to any one other thing. His father had been a short,
solid, square-built little man, whose ambition never towered above his
stature, and who, having entered fairly on the path of industry and
integrity early in life, had sedulously persevered in it to the end. Not
so with the son. He read so much about aristocratic stature, aristocratic
ears, aristocratic hands, aristocratic feet, and aristocratic air, that he
was delighted to find that in all these high qualities he was not easily
to be distinguished from most of the young men of rank he occasionally saw
riding in the parks, or met in the streets, and, though he very well knew
he was not a lord, he began to fancy it a happiness to be thought one by
strangers, for an hour or two in a week.

His passion for trifles and toys was inherent, and it had been increased
by reading two or three caricatures of fashionable men in the novels of
the day, until his happiness was chiefly centered in its indulgence. This
was an expensive foible; and its gratification ere long exhausted his
legitimate means. One or two trifling and undetected peculations favoured
his folly, until a large sum happening to lie at his sole mercy for a week
or two, he made such an inroad on it as compelled a flight. Having made up
his mind to quit England, he thought it would be as easy to escape with
forty thousand pounds as with the few hundreds he had already appropriated
to himself. This capital mistake was the cause of his destruction; for the
magnitude of the sum induced the government to take unusual steps to
recover it, and was the true cause of its having despatched the cruiser in
chase of the Montauk.

The Mr. Green who had