Richmond daily times. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1853, 1852-05-15

German authority. He was born in Calcutta in
the year 1911, and is now consequently Al years
old. His father was high official of the East
India Company, which secured him the entree OF
the best society, and large income. Our au-
thor was born gentleman" He went to school
brutal master, and til misery of that system of
tagging, legalized bullying Of the little boys by
the larger, which is so repulsive to every noble
and decent feeling, and which Englishmen so
stoutly defend, as a process which ''takes the
starch out of PRIDE" but which is altogether too
unreasonable not to lose temper about in discuss
ing. Thackeray has revenged himself upon this
story of CDR. Birch and his Young Friends" and
he has general fling at boarding schools in the
opening Of "Vanity Fair" in which he exhorts
the reader to trust the promise of school pros
pectus no more than he does the praises of an
epitaph. He left school for the University at
Cambridge, where he studied with Kinglake, the
author of Eothen-Eliot Warburton, who wrote
1.-The Crescent and the Cross" and was lost with
the Amazon, and Richard Monckton Mines,
well-known London luterateur, poet, and bio
grapher of Keats, and an ornamental liberal
member of Parliament.
Meanwhile the elder Thackeray died, and the flu
ture historian of Vanity Fair launched himself
into its midst with an annual income of about
thousand pounds. He lived according to his
Willis, ureW Sudl anu CleFeI CdICdIureS,SlHoheu,
lounged, feasted upon books of every kind, and
opened the oyster of the world at leisure. His
mother, woman of great beauty and full of ia
lent and tenderness, whose memory is so flially
embalmed in the character of the mother of Ar
thur Pendenns, married again, about this time,
and the young man, always the object of the
proudest maternal love, came into possession of
his paternal inheritance. He Immediately return
ed from the continent where he had been staying
little time, and took up his residence in the
temple. Nascent jurists and budding barristers
at law, who have completed full course at Cam
bridge or Oxford, enjoy the privilege of paying
high prices for comfortable quarters in the tenn
Pile, and of eating splendid dinners in its ancient
dining room. Here Thackeray entered himself as
a student of jurisprudence, and in the character
of Warrington in '.Pendennis" he has developed
the career Of the students, and the varied life of
the temple, in some of the best passages he has
ever written. Henry Taylor, the dramatist, au-
thor of Philip Van Artevelde, is among the resi-
dents of the temple, and is mentioned by the
German commentator as the original of charac-
ter in Thaekerays Romance. We are at loss to
determine which, for if Warrington be so intend
ed, he seems to US to lose the point. Warning
ton is man Of power without career-Taylor
is man of talent, who has certainly achieved
reputation quite equal to his just claims. How
| ever, the temple not only furnished our author
characters, but also the necessity of drawing
them; for while there, and when scarcely more
than % years old, the young man had fooled
away his property and was poor The days of
smoking, lounging, and loafng, were evidently
ending, and he betook himself to Paris, conceiv-
ing from his facility in sketching that he was born
| for an artist. brief time among the Partisan