time; but it was beginning to give way, when suddenly an internal
change in our own home put an end to the war forever. My brother,
amongst his many accomplishments, was distinguished for his skill in
drawing. Some of his sketches had been shown to Mr. De Loutherbourg,
an academician well known in those days, esteemed even in these days,
after he has been dead for forty or fifty years, and personally a
distinguished favorite with the king, (George III.) He pronounced a
very flattering opinion upon my brother's promise of excellence. This
being known, a fee of a thousand guineas was offered to Mr. L. by the
guardians; and finally that gentleman took charge of my brother as a
pupil. Now, therefore, my brother, King of Tigrosylvania, scourge of
Gombroon, separated from me; and, as it turned out, forever. I never
saw him again; and, at Mr. De L.'s house in Hammersmith, before he had
completed his sixteenth year, he died of typhus fever. And thus it
happened that a little gold dust skilfully applied put an end to wars
that else threatened to extend into a Carthaginian length. In one
week's time

"Hi motus animorum atque haec certamina tanta
Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quierunt."

* * * * *

Here I had terminated this chapter, as at a natural pause, which, whilst
shutting out forever my eldest brother from the reader's sight and
from my own, necessarily at the same moment worked a permanent
revolution in the character of my daily life. Two such changes, and
both so abrupt, indicated imperiously the close of one era and the
opening of another. The advantages, indeed, which my brother had over
me in years, in physical activities of every kind, in decision of