Page:Glenarvon (Volume 1).djvu/24

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instructing them in the same studies, by the same masters, and in every way contriving that they should be continually together he hoped that early habits, and the first affections of childhood, might unite their hearts in indissoluble bonds. But how short-sighted, how little founded in a right knowledge of human nature, was this project! Habituated to the intimacy which subsists between near relations, was it probable that love, when the age of that passion arrived, would be content with objects thus familiar; and that the feelings of the heart would quietly acquiesce in an arrangement which had been previously formed upon the calculations of interest and family pride?—On the contrary, the system pursued in their education, accustomed them to give way to their violent tempers, without restraint, in their intercourse with each other; and the frequent recurrence of petty quarrels, soon produced sentiments, which bordered on dislike; so that