After a concealment protracted to an astonishing length, however, the nest was at last discovered, the poor birds were dispersed, and our hero took his ill-fledged flight to perch upon distant sprays, and to pick his meat from the hand that caters for the sparrow. This was the pivot upon which the whole life of Hodgkinson turned. The irresistible impulse of a vigorous genius would, most probably, under any other circumstances, have sent him ultimately to the goal of his destination; but this event hastened it, most unpropitiously hastened it, and, in an evil hour, cast him forth upon the world, a youth, or rather a boy, ill educated, untutored, unprotected, a precocious adventurer, unprovided with money, and wholly dependant upon God and his own efforts, not only for the food that was to sustain his existence, but for the whole stock of prudence, moral rectitude, and knowledge that were to carry him through life. On this part of the history of Mr. Hodgkinson the candid reader will keep his eye steadily and unalterably fixed. If men who have been brought up with every advantage of excellent education, good breeding, and moral and religious instruction, and who have not been let forth from the hand of guardianship, till their knowledge has been established, and their morals confirmed by habit and good example, are daily seen running headlong into vice, and, with shipwrecked morals, sinking into ruin, can we at all wonder if a poor boy, cast forth into the world in the circumstances of Hodgkinson, and, like a half decked skiff, with lofty rigging and no ballast but its own intrinsic weight, drifted out upon the tempestuous ocean of life, without compass, or chart, or means of keeping reckoning, should have sometimes struck upon those treacherous shelves which lay hidden in the track before him? Is there not rather just cause for wonder that he did not speedily sink to the bottom, but that, on the contrary, he kept afloat, advanced to conspicuity and fame, and would, in all probability, have ultimately come with flying colours to a mooring in the port of honour and happiness, if Death had not unexpectedly arrested him in his progress. It was a little after the time when Hodgkinson had entered his fifteenth year, that the retreating place of our little company of players and musicians was discovered. They were all lads not only of lively genius but of high mettle, and of vigorous animal spirits. Like master Dick, in Murphy’s farce of the Apprentice, they had their heads stuffed with scraps of plays, with which they interlarded their discourse, cracked their jests, praised their favourites, and satirized their enemies, among which last the very worst, in their opinions, were their parents, guardians, and masters. “The character of Dick,” said Hodgkinson more than once to this writer, “is not overcharged.” Our youngsters were quite pat at stage gabble, and Fathers have flinty hearts, no tears can move them,