was a type, cared more for conversational than
epistolary graces. They kept their good things for their dinner-parties,
and hoarded their smart remarks on life for occasions where the success
was a personal triumph. Twice or thrice, however, every year, he was
obliged to write. His man of business required to be reminded of this
or that necessity for money, and his brother Annesley should also
be admonished, or reproved, or remonstrated with, in that tone of
superiority and influence so well befitting one who pays an annuity to
him who is the recipient. In fact, around this one circumstance were
grouped all the fraternal feelings and brotherly interest of these
two men. One hundred and twenty-five pounds sterling every half-year
represented the ties of blood that united them; and while it offered to
the donor the proud reflection of a generous self-sacrifice, it gave to
him who received the almost as agreeable occasion for sarcastic allusion
to the other's miserly habits and sordid nature, with a contrast of what
he himself had done were their places in life reversed.

It was strange enough that the one same incident should have begotten
such very opposite emotions; and yet the two phrases, "If you knew all I
have done for him," and the rejoinder, "You 'd not believe the beggarly
pittance he allows me," were correct exponents of their several
feelings.

Not impossible is it that each might have made out a good case against
the other. Indeed, it was a theme whereon, in their several spheres,
they were eloquent; and few admitted to the confidence of either had not
heard of the utter impossibility of doing anything for Annesley,--his
reckless folly, his profligacy, and his waste; and, on the other hand,
"the incredible meanness of Lackington, with at least twelve thousand a
year, and no children to provide for, giving me the salary of an upper
butler." Each said far too much in his own praise not to have felt, at
least, strong misgivings in his conscience. Each knew far too well that
the other had good reason in many things he said; but so long had their
plausibilities been repeated, that each ended by satisfying himself he
was a paragon of fraternal affection, and, stranger still, had obtained
for this opinion a distinct credence in their several sets in society;
so that every peer praised the Viscount, and every hard-up younger son
pitied poor Annesley, and condemned the "infamous conduct of the old
coxcomb his brother.