Lord and Lady Etheringhame were blind to the faults, even as they were to the good qualities of their children, simply because to neither had they an answering key in themselves; we cannot calculate on the motions of a world, of whose very existence we dream not. They had a certain standard, not so much of right and wrong as of propriety, and took it for granted from this standard no child of theirs could depart.
Algernon[1] the elder brother's character was one peculiarly likely to be mistaken by people of this sort: his melancholy passed for gravity, his timidity for pride, and were therefore held right proper qualities; while his fondness for reading, his habits of abstraction, passed for close study, which made his mother call him such a steady young man; while his father, who had some vague notions of the necessity of great men studying, looked forward to the triumphs of the future statesman. He had been educated, from his delicate health, entirely at home; and his tutor,—who had only in his life moved from his college to the castle, and who had lived entirely among books—books which teach us at once so much and so little of men,—could see nothing but good in the pupil,
- ↑ see opening Note
