fixed upon a youth, however favoured by fortune, who
enjoyed greater advantages for the cultivation of his mind and manners.
From the first dawn of the intellect of the young Armine, Glastonbury
had devoted himself to its culture; and the kind scholar, who had not
shrunk from the painful and patient task of impregnating a young mind
with the seeds of knowledge, had bedewed its budding promise with all
the fertilising influence of his learning and his taste. As Ferdinand
advanced in years, he had participated in the accomplishments of his
mother; from her he derived not only a taste for the fine arts, but no
unskilful practice. She, too, had cultivated the rich voice with which
Nature had endowed him, and it was his mother who taught him not only to
sing, but to dance. In more manly accomplishments, Ferdinand could
not have found a more skilful instructor than his father, a consummate
sportsman, and who, like all his ancestors, was remarkable for his
finished horsemanship and the certainty of his aim. Under a roof, too,
whose inmates were distinguished for their sincere piety and unaffected
virtue, the higher duties of existence were not forgotten; and Ferdinand
Armine was early and ever taught to be sincere, dutiful, charitable,
and just; and to have a deep sense of the great account hereafter to
be delivered to his Creator. The very foibles of his parents which he
imbibed tended to the maintenance of his magnanimity. His illustrious
lineage was early impressed upon him, and inasmuch as little now was
left to them but their honour, so it was doubly incumbent upon him to
preserve that chief treasure, of which fortune could not deprive them,
unsullied.

This much of the education of Ferdinand Armine. With great gifts
of nature, with lively and highly cultivated talents, and a most
affectionate and disciplined temper, he was adored by the friends who
nevertheless had too much sense to spoil him. But for his character,
what was that? Perhaps, with all their anxiety and all their care, and
all their apparent opportunities for observation, the parent and the
tutor are rarely skilful in discovering the character of their child or
charge. Custom blunts the fineness of psychological study: those with
whom we have lived long and early are apt to blend our essential and our
accidental qualities in one bewildering association. The consequences of
education and of nature are not sufficiently discriminated. Nor is it,
indeed, marvell