ssed, Glastonbury was a tenant for life of the
portal of Armine Castle, and all his books and collections were safely
stowed and arranged in the rooms with which he had been so much pleased.

The course of time for some years flowed on happily at Armine. In the
second year of their marriage Lady Armine presented her husband with a
son. Their family was never afterwards increased, but the proud father
was consoled by the sex of his child for the recollection that the
existence of his line depended upon the precious contingency of a single
life. The boy was christened Ferdinand. With the exception of an annual
visit to Lord Grandison, the Armine family never quitted their home.
Necessity as well as taste induced this regularity of life. The affairs
of Sir Ratcliffe did not improve. His mortgagees were more strict in
their demands of interest than his tenants in payment of their rents.
His man of business, who had made his fortune in the service of the
family, was not wanting in accommodation to his client; but he was a
man of business; he could not sympathise with the peculiar feelings and
fancies of Sir Ratcliffe, and he persisted in seizing every opportunity
of urging on him the advisability of selling his estates. However, by
strict economy and temporary assistance from his lawyer, Sir Ratcliffe,
during the first ten years of his marriage, managed to carry on affairs;
and though occasional embarrassments sometimes caused him fits of gloom
and despondency, the sanguine spirit of his wife, and the confidence in
the destiny of their beautiful child which she regularly enforced upon
him, maintained on the whole his courage. All their hopes and joys were
indeed centred in the education of the little Ferdinand. At ten years of
age he was one of those spirited and at the same time docile boys,
who seem to combine with the wild and careless grace of childhood the
thoughtfulness and self-discipline of maturer age. It was the constant
and truthful boast of his parents, that, in spite of all his liveliness,
he had never in the whole course of his life disobeyed them. In the
village, where he was idolised, they called him 'the little prince;'
he was so gentle and so generous, so kind and yet so dignified in his
demeanour. His education was remarkable; for though he never quitted
home, and lived in such extreme seclusion, so richly gifted were those
few persons with whom he passed his life, that it would have been
difficult to have