o doubt that common outcry against
thankless children might often be shown to prove, not that the son is
disobedient, but the father too exacting. When a mother (as fond mothers
often will) vows that she knows every thought in her daughter's heart,
I think she pretends to know a great deal too much; nor can there be a
wholesomer task for the elders, as our young subjects grow up, naturally
demanding liberty and citizen's rights, than for us gracefully to
abdicate our sovereign pretensions and claims of absolute control.
There's many a family chief who governs wisely and gently, who is loth
to give the power up when he should. Ah, be sure, it is not youth alone
that has need to learn humility! By their very virtues, and the purity
of their lives, many good parents create flatterers for themselves, and
so live in the midst of a filial court of parasites--and seldom without
a pang of unwillingness, and often not at all, will they consent to
forgo their autocracy, and exchange the tribute they have been wont
to exact of love and obedience for the willing offering of love and
freedom.

Our good Colonel was not of the tyrannous, but of the loving order of
fathers: and having fixed his whole heart upon this darling youth, his
son, was punished, as I suppose such worldly and selfish love ought
to be punished (so Mr. Honeyman says, at least, in his pulpit), by a
hundred little mortifications, disappointments, and secret wounds, which
stung not the less severely though never mentioned by their victim.

Sometimes he would have a company of such gentlemen as Messrs.
Warrington, Honeyman, and Pendennis, when haply a literary conversation
would ensue after dinner; and the merits of our present poets and
writers would be discussed with the claret. Honeyman was well enough
read in profane literature, especially of the lighter sort; and, I dare
say, could have passed a satisfactory examination in Balzac, Dumas,
and Paul de Kock himself, of all whose works our good host was entirely
ignorant,--as indeed he was of graver books, and of earlier books, and
of books in general--except those few which we have said formed his
travelling library. He heard opinions that amazed and bewildered him. He
heard that Byron was no great poet, though a very clever man. He heard
that there had been a wicked persecution against Mr. Pope's memory and
fame, and that it was time to reinstate him that his favourite, Dr.
Johnson, talked admirably, but did not w