Like Robinson Crusoe, Richard Frere was born of respectable parents. His father was the representative of a family who in Saxon days would have been termed “Franklins”--_i.e_., a superior class of yeomen, possessed of certain broad acres, which they farmed themselves. The grandfather Frere having, in a moment of ambition, sent his eldest son to Eton, was made aware of his error when the young hopeful on leaving school declared his intention of going to college, and utterly repudiated the plough-tail. Having a very decided will of his own, and a zealous supporter in his mother, to college he went, and thence to a special pleader, to read for the bar. Being really clever, and determined to prove to his father the wisdom of the course he had adopted, sufficiently industrious also, he got into very tolerable practice. On one occasion, having been retained in a well-known contested peerage case, by his acuteness and eloquence he gained his cause, and at the same time the affections of the successful disputant’s younger sister. His noble client very ungratefully opposed the match, but love and law together proved too powerful for his lordship. One fine evening the young lady made a moonlight flitting of it, and before twelve o’clock on the following morning had become Mrs. Frere. Within a year from this event Richard Frere made his appearance at the cradle terminus of the railroad of life. When he was six years old, his father, after speaking for three hours, in a cause in which he was leader, more eloquently than he had ever before done, broke a blood-vessel, and was carried home a dying man. His wife loved him as woman alone can love--for his sake she had given up friends, fortune, rank, and the pleasures and embellishments of life; for his sake she now gave up life itself. Grief does not always kill quickly, yet Richard’s ninth birthday was spent among strangers. His noble uncle, who felt that by neglecting his sister on her death-bed he had done his duty to his pedigree handsomely, and might now give way to family affection, sent the orphan to school at Westminster, and even allowed him to run wild at Bellefield Park during the holidays.