With Mr. Zachary Hope, of Rotterdam, had been placed a sum sufficient to defray his school expenses; and a half-yearly payment had regularly been remitted by him to Workum, with some general inquiry as to the health and progress of the little Englishman. For this civility it was deemed necessary that the young gentleman should call and express his thanks. To most boys of thirteen this would have been an awful undertaking, but he possessed a naturally frank and open disposition, which, combined with the advantage of a strikingly handsome person, seldom failed to prepossess strangers in his favour. Perhaps these advantages were aided by the interesting situation of a boy thus thrown upon the kindness of strangers. From whatever cause it arose, however, this call of civility ended in an invitation to remain two days: and, during that short time, he became so great a favourite, that it was declared "impossible to part with young Repton:" and thus, for five months, he was domesticated in Mr. Hope's family, a sharer in all the advantages of education with his only son, enjoying every pleasure and luxury which wealth could procure, and honoured by the friendship of other branches of that numerous and respectable name, which, both at Amsterdam and Rotterdam, had established a kind of rank which vied with the proudest families of other countries. With these kind friends he visited the celebrated watering-place of Spa; and here he again enjoyed the benefit to be derived from an introduction into the best society both of Englishmen and foreigners. By the latter, "le petit Anglais" was now especially noticed with kindly interest. Whether all these circumstances tended to forward his father's views in sending him to study Dutch, in order to make him a rich man, may be somewhat doubted; but it may be imagined that they improved the natural quickness of his intellect, gave a polish to his manners (not likely to have been acquired under the tuition of his good old schoolmaster, Mynheer Algidius Zimmerman), and expanded his mind by so early an intercourse with the world. These were advantages of inestimable value in his future career, which have always been acknowledged by himself with gratitude, when he recalled the happy days passed with his early friend, Mr. Zachary Hope.
