th, and good, and
wisdom: how often, and how vainly!

And when the youths grew up, and their good and evil grew up with them,
it were possible to tell you a heart-rending tale of Julian's treachery
to more than one poor village beauty; and many a pleasing trait of
Charles's pure benevolence, and wise zeal to remedy his brother's
mischiefs. The one went about doing ill, and the other doing good:
Julian, on account of obligations, more truly than in spite of them,
hated Charles; and yet one great aim of all Charles's amiabilities
tended continually to Julian's good, and he strove to please him, too,
while he wished to bless him. The one had grown to manhood, full of
unrepented sins, and ripe for darker crime: the other had attained a
like age of what is somewhat satirically called discretion, having
amassed, with Solon of old, "knowledge day by day," having lived a life
of piety and purity, and blest with a cheerful disposition, that teemed
with happy thoughts.

They had, of course, in the progress of human life, been both laid upon
the bed of sickness, where, with similar contrast, the one lay muttering
discontent, and the other smiling patiently: they had both been in
dangers by land and by sea, where Julian, though not a little lacking to
himself at the moment of peril, was still loudly minacious till it came
too near; while Charles, with all his caution, was more actually
courageous, and in spite of all his gentleness, stood against the worst
undaunted: they had both, with opposite motives and dissimilar modes of
life, passed through various vicissitudes of feeling, scene, society;
and the influence of circumstance on their different characters,
heightened or diminished, bettered or depraved, by the good or evil
principle in each, had produced their different and probable results.

Thus, strangely dissimilar, the twin-brothers together stand before us:
Julian the strong impersonation of the animal man, as Charles of the
intellectual; Julian, matter; Charles, spirit; Julian, the creature of
this world, tending to a lower and a worse: Charles, though in the
world, not of the world, and reaching to a higher and a better.

Mrs. Tracy, the mother of this various progeny, had been somewhat of a
beauty in her day, albeit much too large and masculine for the taste of
ordinary mortals; and though now very considerably past forty, the vain
vast female was still ambitious of compliment, and greedy of admiration.
That Julian