CHAPTER I.

His Childhood.

Saint Paul gives the general history of childhood in one sentence: "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child." The thoughts and ways of children are wonderfully similar; the mind is not sufficiently developed to give direction to character, and the peculiar incidents that are sometimes recorded to prove "the child the father of the man," seem more the result of chance than deliberation. With all this, we like to bask our memory in those sunny days: we love to look at our cradles, at where we made and spoiled our little castles, and we recall the smallest incidents to mind, as if to try and fancy we could be children again. This natural sentiment makes us anxious to know all about the infancy and childhood of those whose life has an interest for us; {2} although knowing that there can be nothing very strange about it; and even, if there be, that it cannot have much weight in moulding the character of our hero, and less still in influencing our own. The childhood of Father Ignatius forms an exception to this. It is wonderful; it shaped his character for a great part of his life. Its history is written by himself, and it is instructive to all who have charge of children. Before quoting from his own autobiography, it may be well to say something about his family; more, because it is customary to do so on occasions like the present, than to give information about what is already well known.

His father was George John, Earl Spencer, K.G., &c., &c. He was connected by ties of consanguinity and affinity with the Earl of Sunderland and the renowned Duke of Marlborough; was successively member of Parliament, one of the Lords of the Treasury, and succeeded Lord Chatham as First Lord of the Admiralty on the 20th of December, 1794. This office he retained until 1800, and, during his administration, the naval history of England shone with the victories of St. Vincent, Camperdown, and the Nile. Perhaps his term of office was more glorious to himself from the moderation and justice with which he quelled the mutiny at the Nore, than from the fact of his having published the victories that gave such glory to his country. He married, in 1781, Lavinia, the daughter of Sir Charles Bingham, afterwards Earl of Lucan. Five sons and three daughters were the issue of this marriage. Two of them died in infancy. The oldest, John Charles, Lord Althorp, succeeded his father in 1834, and died childless in 1845; the second, Sarah, is the present Dowager Lady Lyttelton; the fifth, Robert Cavendish, died unmarried in 1830; the sixth, Georgiana, was married to Lord George Quin, son to the Marquis of Headfort, and died in 1823; the seventh, Frederick, father of the present earl, succeeded his eldest brother in 1845. The youngest, the Honourable George Spencer, is the subject of the present biography.

He was born on the 21st of December, 1799, at the Admiralty in London, and baptized according to the rite of {3} the Church of England, by the Rev. Charles Norris, prebendary of Canterbury. Whether he was taken to Althorp, the family seat in Northamptonshire, to be nursed, before his father retired from office in 1800, we have no means of knowing; but, certain it is, that it was there he spent his childhood until he went to Eton in 1808. We will let himself give us the history of his mind during this portion of his existence: the history of his body is that of a nobleman's child, tended in all things as became his station:--

"My recollections of the five or six first years of my life are very vague,--more so by far than in the case of other persons; and whether I had any notions of religion before my six-year-old birthday, I cannot tell. But it was on that day, if I am not mistaken, that I was taken aside, as for a serious conversation, by my sister's governess, who was a Swiss lady, under whose care I passed the years between leaving the nursery and being sent to school, and instructed by her, for the first time, concerning the existence of God and some other great truths of religion. It seems strange now that I should have lived so long without acquiring any ideas on the subject: my memory may deceive me, but I have a most clear recollection of the very room at Althorp where I sat with her while she declared to me, as a new piece of instruction, for which till then I had not been judged old enough, that there was an Almighty Being, dwelling in heaven, who had created me and all things, and whom I was bound to fear. Till then, I believe, I had not the least apprehension of the existence of anything beyond the sensible world around me. This declaration, made to me as it was with tender seriousness, was, I believe, accompanied with gracious expressions, which have never been, in all my errors and wanderings, obliterated. To what but the grace of God can I ascribe it, that I firmly believed from the first moment this truth, of which I was not capable of understanding a proof, and that I never since have entertained a doubt of it, nor been led, like so many more, to universal scepticism; that my faith in the truth of God should have been preserved while for so long a time I lived, as I afterwards did, wholly without its influence?

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"I continued, with my brother Frederick, who was twenty months older than myself, under the instruction of this same governess, till we went to Eton School. I do not remember the least difficulty in receiving as true whatever I was taught of religion at that time. It never occurred to me to think that objections might be made to it, though I knew that different religious persuasions existed. I remember being told by our governess, and being pleased in the idea, that the Church of England was peculiarly excellent; but I remember no distinct feelings of opposition or aversion to the Catholic religion. Of serious impressions I was at that time, I believe, very susceptible; but they must have been most transient. I remember, more than once, distinctly saying my prayers with fervour; though, generally, I suppose, I paid but little attention to them. I was sometimes impressed with great fear of the Day of Judgment, as I remember once in particular, at hearing a French sermon read about it; and, perhaps, I did not knowingly offend God, but I could not be said to love God, nor heartily to embrace religion, if, as I suppose, my ordinary feeling must have corresponded with what I remember well crossing my mind when I was about seven years old,--great regret at reflecting on the sin of Adam; by which I understood that I could not expect to live for ever on the earth. Whatever I thought desirable in the world,--abundance of money, high titles, amusements of all sorts, fine dress, and the like,--as soon and as far as I understood anything about them, I loved and longed for; nor do I see how it could have been otherwise, as the holy, severe maxims of the Gospel truth on these matters were not impressed upon me. Why is it that the truth on these things is so constantly withheld from children; and, instead of being taught by constant, repeated, unremitting lessons that the world and all that it has is worth nothing; that, if they gain all, but lose their souls, they gain nothing; if they lose all and gain their souls, they gain all? Why is it that they are to be encouraged to do right by promises of pleasure, deterred from evil by worldly fear, and so trained up, as it seems, to put a false value on all things? How {5} easily, as it now appears to me, might my affections in those days have been weaned from the world, and made to value God alone? But let me not complain, but bless God for the care,--the very unusual care, I believe,--which was taken of me, by which I remained, I may say, ignorant of what evil was at an age when many, I fear, become proficients. This blessing, however, of being wonderfully preserved from the knowledge, and consequently from the practice, of vice, was more remarkably manifested in the four years of my life succeeding those of which I have been now writing."

The instilling into young minds religious motives for their actions was a frequent topic of conversation with Father Ignatius in his after-life. He was once speaking with some of our young religious on this subject in general; one of them remarked how easy it was to act upon holy motives practically, and instanced his own childhood, when the thought that God would love or hate him kept him straight in his actions: this was the simple and perpetually repeated lesson of his mother, which he afterwards forgot, but which finally stopped him in a career of ambition, and made him a religious. The old man's eye glistened as he heard this, and he sighed deeply. He then observed that it confirmed his opinion, that parents ought to instruct their own children, and never commit them to the mercies of a public school until they were perfectly grounded in the practice of virtue and piety. The next chapter will show why he thought thus.

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