career of
groaning at the desk, with more complacency than was expected from him.
Sir William forwarded excellent accounts to his brother of the behaviour
of the heir to his estates. It was his way of rebuking the squire, and in
return for it the squire, though somewhat comforted, despised his clerkly
son, and lived to learn how very unjustly he did so. Adolescents, who
have the taste for running into excesses, enjoy the breath of change as
another form of excitement: change is a sort of debauch to them. They
will delight infinitely in a simple country round of existence, in
propriety and church-going, in the sensation of feeling innocent. There
is little that does not enrapture them, if you tie them down to nothing,
and let them try all. Sir William was deceived by his nephew. He would
have taken him into his town-house; but his own son, Edward, who was
studying for the Law, had chambers in the Temple, and Algernon, receiving
an invitation from Edward, declared a gentle preference for the abode of
his cousin. His allowance from his father was properly contracted to keep
him from excesses, as the genius of his senior devised, and Sir William
saw no objection to the scheme, and made none. The two dined with him
about twice in the month.

Edward Blancove was three-and-twenty years old, a student by fits, and a
young man given to be moody. He had powers of gaiety far eclipsing
Algernon's, but he was not the same easy tripping sinner and flippant
soul. He was in that yeasty condition of his years when action and
reflection alternately usurp the mind; remorse succeeded dissipation, and
indulgences offered the soporific to remorse. The friends of the two
imagined that Algernon was, or would become, his evil genius. In reality,
Edward was the perilous companion. He was composed of better stuff.
Algernon was but an airy animal nature, the soul within him being an
effervescence lightly let loose. Edward had a fatally serious spirit, and
one of some strength. What he gave himself up to, he could believe to be
correct, in the teeth of an opposing world, until he tired of it, when he
sided as heartily with the world against his quondam self. Algernon might
mislead, or point his cousin's passions for a time; yet if they continued
their courses together, there was danger that Algernon would degenerate
into a reckless subordinate--a minister, a valet, and be tempted
unknowingly to do things in earnest, which is nothing less than perdit