magine that it did
not please me. Meanwhile the old huntsman, whose family was about
as ancient as ours, and whose ancestors had officiated in his
capacity for the ancestors of his master time out of mind, told me
story after story about the Brandons of yore. I turned from the
stories to more legitimate history, and found the legends were
tolerably true. I learned to glow at this discovery; the pride,
humbled when I remembered my sire, revived when I remembered my
ancestors. I became resolved to emulate them, to restore a sunken
name, and vowed a world of nonsense on the subject. The habit of
brooding over these ideas grew on me. I never heard a jest broken
on my paternal guardian, I never caught the maudlin look of his
reeling eyes, nor listened to some exquisite inanity from his
besotted lips, but that my thoughts flew instantly back to the Sir
Charleses and the Sir Roberts of my race, and I comforted myself
with the hope that the present degeneracy should pass away. Hence,
Julia, my family pride; hence, too, another feeling you dislike in
me,--disdain! I first learned to despise my father, the host, and I
then despised my acquaintances, his guests; for I saw, while they
laughed at him, that they flattered, and that their merriment was
not the only thing suffered to feed at his expense. Thus contempt
grew up with me, and I had nothing to check it; for when I looked
around I saw not one living thing that I could respect. This father
of mine had the sense to think I was no idiot. He was proud (poor
man!) of 'my talents,' namely, of prizes won at school, and
congratulatory letters from my masters. He sent me to college.
My mind took a leap there; I will tell you, prettiest, what it was!
Before I went thither I had some fine vague visions about virtue.
I thought to revive my ancestral honours by being good; in short, I
was an embryo King Pepin. I awoke from this dream at the
University. There, for the first time, I perceived the real
consequence of rank.

"At school, you know, Julia, boys care nothing for a lord. A good
cricketer, an excellent fellow, is worth all the earls in the
peerage. But at college all that ceases; bats and balls sink into
the nothingness in which corals and bells had sunk before. One
grows manly, and wors