manner of good things had been prophesied on his
behalf. He had been in love before he was eighteen, and very nearly
succeeded in running away with the young lady before he went to
college. His father had died when he was an infant, so that at
twenty-one he was thought to be in possession of comfortable wealth.
At Oxford he was considered to have got into a good set,--men of
fashion who were also given to talking of books,--who spent money,
read poetry, and had opinions of their own respecting the Tracts
and Mr. Newman. He took his degree, and then started himself in the
world upon that career which is of all the most difficult to follow
with respect and self-comfort. He proposed to himself the life of an
idle man with a moderate income,--a life which should be luxurious,
refined, and graceful, but to which should be attached the burden
of no necessary occupation. His small estate gave him but little to
do, as he would not farm any portion of his own acres. He became a
magistrate in his county; but he would not interest himself with the
price of a good yoke of bullocks, as did Mr. Justice Shallow,--nor
did he ever care how a score of ewes went at any fair. There is no
harder life than this. Here and there we may find a man who has so
trained himself that day after day he can devote his mind without
compulsion to healthy pursuits, who can induce himself to work,
though work be not required from him for any ostensible object, who
can save himself from the curse of misusing his time, though he has
for it no defined and necessary use; but such men are few, and are
made of better metal than was Mr. Maule. He became an idler, a man of
luxury, and then a spendthrift. He was now hardly beyond middle life,
and he assumed for himself the character of a man of taste. He loved
music, and pictures, and books, and pretty women. He loved also good
eating and drinking; but conceived of himself that in his love for
them he was an artist, and not a glutton. He had married early, and
his wife had died soon. He had not given himself up with any special
zeal to the education of his children, nor to the preservation of his
property. The result of his indifference has been told in a previous
chapter. His house was deserted, and his children were scattered
about the world. His eldest son, having means of his own, was living
an idle, desultory life, hardly with prospects of better success than
had attended his father.

Mr. Maule was now someth