onest pride of the old man--the stout old man?

Ay, old man, that son was worthy of thee, and thou wast worthy of such a
son; a noble specimen wast thou of those strong single-minded Englishmen,
who, without making a parade either of religion or loyalty, feared God
and honoured their king, and were not particularly friendly to the
French, whose vaunting polls they occasionally broke, as at Minden and at
Malplaquet, to the confusion vast of the eternal foes of the English
land. I, who was so little like thee that thou understoodst me not, and
in whom with justice thou didst feel so little pride, had yet perception
enough to see all thy worth, and to feel it an honour to be able to call
myself thy son; and if at some no distant time, when the foreign enemy
ventures to insult our shore, I be permitted to break some vaunting poll,
it will be a triumph to me to think that, if thou hadst lived, thou
wouldst have hailed the deed, and mightest yet discover some distant
resemblance to thyself, the day when thou didst all but vanquish the
mighty Brain.

I have already spoken of my brother's taste for painting, and the
progress he had made in that beautiful art. It is probable that, if
circumstances had not eventually diverted his mind from the pursuit, he
would have attained excellence, and left behind him some enduring
monument of his powers, for he had an imagination to conceive, and that
yet rarer endowment, a hand capable of giving life, body, and reality to
the conceptions of his mind; perhaps he wanted one thing, the want of
which is but too often fatal to the sons of genius, and without which
genius is little more than a splendid toy in the hands of the
possessor--perseverance, dogged perseverance, in his proper calling;
otherwise, though the grave had closed over him, he might still be living
in the admiration of his fellow-creatures. O ye gifted ones, follow your
calling, for, however various your talents may be, ye can have but one
calling capable of leading ye to eminence and renown; follow resolutely
the one straight path before you, it is that of your good angel, let
neither obstacles nor temptations induce ye to leave it; bound along if
you can; if not, on hands and knees follow it, perish in it, if needful;
but ye need not fear that; no one ever yet died in the true path of his
calling before he had attained the pinnacle. Turn into other paths, and
for a momentary advantage or gratification ye have sold your in