There once lived, in a sequestered part of the county of Devonshire, oneMr Godfrey Nickleby: a worthy gentleman, who, taking it into his headrather late in life that he must get married, and not being young enoughor rich enough to aspire to the hand of a lady of fortune, had wedded anold flame out of mere attachment, who in her turn had taken him for thesame reason. Thus two people who cannot afford to play cards for money,sometimes sit down to a quiet game for love.

Some ill-conditioned persons who sneer at the life-matrimonial, mayperhaps suggest, in this place, that the good couple would be betterlikened to two principals in a sparring match, who, when fortune is lowand backers scarce, will chivalrously set to, for the mere pleasureof the buffeting; and in one respect indeed this comparison would holdgood; for, as the adventurous pair of the Fives' Court will afterwardssend round a hat, and trust to the bounty of the lookers-on for themeans of regaling themselves, so Mr Godfrey Nickleby and HIS partner,the honeymoon being over, looked out wistfully into the world, relyingin no inconsiderable degree upon chance for the improvement of theirmeans. Mr Nickleby's income, at the period of his marriage, fluctuatedbetween sixty and eighty pounds PER ANNUM.

There are people enough in the world, Heaven knows! and even in London(where Mr Nickleby dwelt in those days) but few complaints prevail, ofthe population being scanty. It is extraordinary how long a man may lookamong the crowd without discovering the face of a friend, but it is noless true. Mr Nickleby looked, and looked, till his eyes became soreas his heart, but no friend appeared; and when, growing tired of thesearch, he turned his eyes homeward, he saw very little there to relievehis weary vision. A painter who has gazed too long upon some glaringcolour, refreshes his dazzled sight by looking upon a darker and moresombre tint; but everything that met Mr Nickleby's gaze wore so blackand gloomy a hue, that he would have been beyond description refreshedby the very reverse of the contrast.

At length, after five years, when Mrs Nickleby had presented her husbandwith a couple of sons, and that embarrassed gentleman, impressed withthe necessity of making some provision for his family, was seriouslyrevolving in his mind a little commercial speculation of insuring hislife next quarter-day, and then falling from the top of the Monument byaccident, there came, one morning, by the general post, a black-borderedletter to inform him how his uncle, Mr Ralph Nickleby, was dead, andhad left him the bulk of his little property, amounting in all to fivethousand pounds sterling.

As the deceased had taken no further notice of his nephew in hislifetime, than sending to his eldest boy (who had been christened afterhim, on desperate speculation) a silver spoon in a morocco case, which,as he had not too much to eat with it, seemed a kind of satire upon hishaving been born without that useful article of plate in his mouth,Mr Godfrey Nickleby could, at first, scarcely believe the tidings thusconveyed to him. On examination, however, they turned out to be strictlycorrect. The amiable old gentleman, it seemed, had intended to leavethe whole to the Royal Humane Society, and had indeed executed a will tothat effect; but the Institution, having been unfortunate enough, a fewmonths before, to save the life of a poor relation to whom he paid aweekly allowance of three shillings and sixpence, he had, in a fit ofvery natural exasperation, revoked the bequest in a codicil, and left itall to Mr Godfrey Nickleby; with a special mention of his indignation,not only against the society for saving the poor relation's life, butagainst the poor relation also, for allowing himself to be saved.

With a portion of this property Mr Godfrey Nickleby purchased a smallfarm, near Dawlish in Devonshire, whither he retired with his wife andtwo children, to live upon the best interest he could get for the restof his money, and the little produce he could raise from his land. Thetwo prospered so well together that, when he died, some fifteen yearsafter this period, and some five after his wife, he was enabled toleave, to his eldest son, Ralph, three thousand pounds in cash, andto his youngest son, Nicholas, one thousand and the farm, which was assmall a landed estate as one would desire to see.

These two brothers had been brought up together in a school at Exeter;and, being accustomed to go home once a week, had often heard, fromtheir mother's lips, long accounts of their father's sufferings in hisdays of poverty, and of their deceased uncle's importance in his daysof affluence: which recitals produced a very different impression onthe two: for, while the younger, who was of a timid and retiringdisposition, gleaned from thence nothing but forewarnings to shun thegreat world and attach himself to the quiet routine of a country life,Ralph, the elder, deduced from the often-repeated tale the two greatmorals that riches are the only true source of happiness and power, andthat it is lawful and just to compass their acquisition by all meansshort of felony. 'And,' reasoned Ralph with himself, 'if no good cameof my uncle's money when he was alive, a great deal of good came of itafter he was dead, inasmuch as my father has got it now, and is savingit up for me, which is a highly virtuous purpose; and, going back to theold gentleman, good DID come of it to him too, for he had the pleasureof thinking of it all his life long, and of being envied and courtedby all his family besides.' And Ralph always wound up these mentalsoliloquies by arriving at the conclusion, that there was nothing likemoney.

Not confining himself to theory, or permitting his faculties to rust,even at that early age, in mere abstract speculations, this promisinglad commenced usurer on a limited scale at school; putting out at goodinterest a small capital of slate-pencil and marbles, and graduallyextending his operations until they aspired to the copper coinage ofthis realm, in which he speculated to considerable advantage. Nor didhe trouble his borrowers with abstract calculations of figures, orreferences to ready-reckoners; his simple rule of interest being allcomprised in the one golden sentence, 'two-pence for every half-penny,'which greatly simplified the accounts, and which, as a familiar precept,more easily acquired and retained in the memory than any known ruleof arithmetic, cannot be too strongly recommended to the notice ofcapitalists, both large and small, and more especially of money-brokersand bill-discounters. Indeed, to do these gentlemen justice, many ofthem are to this day in the frequent habit of adopting it, with eminentsuccess.

In like manner, did young Ralph Nickleby avoid all those minute andintricate calculations of odd days, which nobody who has worked sumsin simple-interest can fail to have found most embarrassing, byestablishing the one general rule that all sums of principal andinterest should be paid on pocket-money day, that is to say, onSaturday: and that whether a loan were contracted on the Monday, or onthe Friday, the amount of interest should be, in both cases, the same.Indeed he argued, and with great show of reason, that it ought to berather more for one day than for five, inasmuch as the borrower mightin the former case be very fairly presumed to be in great extremity,otherwise he would not borrow at all with such odds against him. Thisfact is interesting, as illustrating the secret connection and sympathywhich always exist between great minds. Though Master Ralph Nickleby wasnot at that time aware of it, the class of gentlemen before alluded to,proceed on just the same principle in all their transactions.

From what we have said of this young gentleman, and the naturaladmiration the reader will immediately conceive of his character, it mayperhaps be inferred that he is to be the hero of the work which we shallpresently begin. To set this point at rest, for once and for ever, wehasten to undeceive them, and stride to its commencement.

On the death of his father, Ralph Nickleby, who had been some timebefore placed in a mercantile house in London, applied himselfpassionately to his old pursuit of money-getting, in which he speedilybecame so buried and absorbed, that he quite forgot his brother for manyyears; and if, at times, a recollection of his old playfellow brokeupon him through the haze in which he lived--for gold conjures up a mistabout a man, more destructive of all his old senses and lulling tohis feelings than the fumes of charcoal--it brought along with it acompanion thought, that if they were intimate he would want to borrowmoney of him. So, Mr Ralph Nickleby shrugged his shoulders, and saidthings were better as they were.

As for Nicholas, he lived a single man on the patrimonial estate untilhe grew tired of living alone, and then he took to wife the daughter ofa neighbouring gentleman with a dower of one thousand pounds. This goodlady bore him two children, a son and a daughter, and when the sonwas about nineteen, and the daughter fourteen, as near as we canguess--impartial records of young ladies' ages being, before the passingof the new act, nowhere preserved in the registries of this country--MrNickleby looked about him for the means of repairing his capital, nowsadly reduced by this increase in his family, and the expenses of theireducation.

'Speculate with it,' said Mrs Nickleby.

'Spec--u--late, my dear?' said Mr Nickleby, as though in doubt.

'Why not?' asked Mrs Nickleby.

'Because, my dear, if we SHOULD lose it,' rejoined Mr Nickleby, whowas a slow and time-taking speaker, 'if we SHOULD lose it, we shall nolonger be able to live, my dear.'

'Fiddle,' said Mrs Nickleby.

'I am not altogether sure of that, my dear,' said Mr Nickleby.

'There's Nicholas,' pursued the lady, 'quite a young man--it's time hewas in the way of doing something for himself; and Kate too, poor girl,without a penny in the world. Think of your brother! Would he be what heis, if he hadn't speculated?'

'That's true,' replied Mr Nickleby. 'Very good, my dear. Yes. I WILLspeculate, my dear.'

Speculation is a round game; the players see little or nothing of theircards at first starting; gains MAY be great--and so may losses. The runof luck went against Mr Nickleby. A mania prevailed, a bubble burst,four stock-brokers took villa residences at Florence, four hundrednobodies were ruined, and among them Mr Nickleby.

'The very house I live in,' sighed the poor gentleman, 'may be takenfrom me tomorrow. Not an article of my old furniture, but will be soldto strangers!'

The last reflection hurt him so much, that he took at once to his bed;apparently resolved to keep that, at all events.

'Cheer up, sir!' said the apothecary.

'You mustn't let yourself be cast down, sir,' said the nurse.

'Such things happen every day,' remarked the lawyer.

'And it is very sinful to rebel against them,' whispered the clergyman.

'And what no man with a family ought to do,' added the neighbours.

Mr Nickleby shook his head, and motioning them all out of the room,embraced his wife and children, and having pressed them by turns tohis languidly beating heart, sunk exhausted on his pillow. They wereconcerned to find that his reason went astray after this; for hebabbled, for a long time, about the generosity and goodness of hisbrother, and the merry old times when they were at school together.This fit of wandering past, he solemnly commended them to One who neverdeserted the widow or her fatherless children, and, smiling gently onthem, turned upon his face, and observed, that he thought he could fallasleep.