self-indulgence of a very English home. His days began there: it
closed again, after an interval of the larger number of them,
indulgently, mercifully, round his end. For awhile he became its
centre, old habits changing, the old furniture rearranged about him,
for the first time in many generations, though he left it now with
something like [202] resentment in his heart, as if thrust harshly
away, sent ablactatus a matre; made an effort thereon to snap the last
thread which bound him to it. Yet it would come back upon him
sometimes, amid so different a scene, as through a suddenly opened
door, or a rent in the wall, with softer thoughts of his
people,--there, or not there,--and a sudden, dutiful effort on his part
to rekindle wasting affection.

The youngest of four sons, but not the youngest of the family!--you
conceive the sort of negligence that creeps over even the kindest
maternities, in such case; unless, perhaps, sickness, or the sort of
misfortune, making the last first for the affectionate, that brought
Emerald back at length to die contentedly, interferes with the way of
nature. Little by little he comes to understand that, while the
brothers are indulged with lessons at home, are some of them free even
of these and placed already in the world, where, however, there remains
no place for him, he is to go to school, chiefly for the convenience of
others--they are going to be much away from home!--that now for the
first time, as he says to himself, an old-English Uthwart is to pass
under the yoke. The tutor in the house, meantime, aware of some
fascination in the lad, teaches him, at his own irregularly chosen
hours, more carefully than the others; exerts all his gifts for the
purpose, winning him on almost insensibly to youthful proficiency in
those difficult rudiments.

[203] See him as he stands, seemingly rooted in the spot where he has
come to flower! He departs, however, a few days before the departure
of the rest--some to foreign parts, the brothers, who shut up the old
place, to town. For a moment, he makes an effort to figure to himself
those coming absences as but exceptional intervals in his life here; he
will count the days, going more quickly so; find his pleasure in
watching the sands fall, as even the sands of time at school must. In
fact, he was scarcely ever to lie at ease here again, till he came to
take his final leave of it, lying at his length so. In brief holidays
he rejoins his