Mihi jam non regia Roma, Sed vacuum Tibur placet.--Horace.
“My dear child,” said my mother to me, affectionately, “you must be very
much bored here, pour dire vrai, I am so myself. Your uncle is a very
good man, but he does not make his house pleasant; and I have, lately,
been very much afraid that he should convert you into a mere bookworm;
after all, my dear Henry, you are quite clever enough to trust to your
own ability. Your great geniuses never read.”
“True, my dear mother,” said I, with a most unequivocal yawn, and
depositing on the table Mr. Bentham upon Popular Fallacies; “true, and
I am quite of your opinion. Did you see in the Post of this morning, how
full Cheltenham was?”
“Yes, Henry; and now you mention it, I don’t think you could do better
than to go there for a month or two. As for me, I must return to your
father, whom I left at Lord H--‘s: a place, entre nous, very little more
amusing than this--but then one does get one’s ecarte table, and that
dear Lady Roseville, your old acquaintance, is staying there.”
“Well,” said I, musingly, “suppose we take our departure the beginning
of next week?--our way will be the same as far as London, and the plea
of attending you will be a good excuse to my uncle, for proceeding no
farther in these confounded books.”
“C’est une affaire finie,” replied my mother, “and I will speak to your
uncle myself.”
Accordingly the necessary disclosure of our intentions was made. Lord
Glenmorris received it with proper indifference, so far as my mother was
concerned; but expressed much pain at my leaving him so soon. However,
when he found I was not so much gratified as honoured by his wishes for
my longer sejour, he gave up the point with a delicacy that enchanted
me.
The morning of our departure arrived. Carriage at the door--bandboxes in
the passage--breakfast on the table--myself in my great coat--my uncle
in his great chair. “My dear boy,” said he, “I trust we shall meet again
soon: you have abilities that may make you capable of effecting much
good to your fellow-creatures; but you are fond of the world, and,
though not averse to application, devoted to pleasure, and likely to
pervert the gifts you possess. At all events, you have now learned, both
as a public character and a private individual, the difference between
good and evil. Make but this distinction, that whereas, in political
science, though the rules you have learned be fixed and unerring, yet
the application of them must vary with time and circumstance. We must
bend, temporize, and frequently withdraw, doctrines, which, invariable
in their truth, the prejudices of the time will not invariably allow,
and even relinquish a faint hope of obtaining a great good, for the
certainty of obtaining a lesser; yet in the science of private morals,
which relate for the main part to ourselves individually, we have no
right to deviate one single iota from the rule of our conduct. Neither
time nor circumstance must cause us to modify or to change. Integrity
knows no variation; honesty no shadow of turning. We must pursue the
same course--stern and uncompromising--in the full persuasion that the
path of right is like the bridge from earth to heaven, in the Mahometan
creed--if we swerve but a single hair’s breadth, we are irrevocably
lost.”
At this moment my mother joined us, with a “Well, my dear Henry, every
thing is ready--we have no time to lose.”
My uncle rose, pressed my hand, and left in it a pocket-book, which I
afterwards discovered to be most satisfactorily furnished. We took an
edifying and affectionate farewell of each other, passed through the
two rows of servants, drawn up in martial array, along the great hall,
entered the carriage, and went off with the rapidity of a novel upon
“fashionable life.”