sign
of politeness, I wish you could have seen the faces that smiled upon
Captain Roland as he walked down the village, nodding from side to side.

One day a frank, hearty old woman, who had known Roland as a boy, seeing
him lean on my arm, stopped us, as she said bluffly, to take a "geud
luik" at me.

Fortunately I was stalwart enough to pass muster, even in the eyes of
a Cumberland matron; and after a compliment at which Roland seemed much
pleased, she said to me, but pointing to the Captain,--

"Hegh, sir, now you ha' the bra' time before you, you maun e'en try and
be as geud as he. And if life last, ye wull too; for there never waur a
bad ane of that stock. Wi' heads kindly stup'd to the least, and lifted
manfu' oop to the heighest,--that ye all war' sin ye came from the Ark.
Blessin's on the ould name! though little pelf goes with it, it sounds
on the peur man's ear like a bit of gould!"

"Do you not see now," said Roland, as we turned away, "what we owe to
a name, and what to our forefathers? Do you not see why the remotest
ancestor has a right to our respect and consideration,--for he was
a parent? 'Honor your parents': the law does not say, 'Honor your
children!' If a child disgrace us, and the dead, and the sanctity of
this great heritage of their virtues,--the name; if he does--" Roland
stopped short, and added fervently, "But you are my heir now,--I have no
fear! What matter one foolish old man's sorrows? The name, that property
of generations, is saved, thank Heaven,--the name!"

Now the riddle was solved, and I understood why, amidst all his natural
grief for a son's loss, that proud father was consoled. For he was less
himself a father than a son,--son to the long dead. From every grave
where a progenitor slept, he had heard a parent's voice. He could bear
to be bereaved, if the forefathers were not dishonored. Roland was
more than half a Roman; the son might still cling to his household
affections, but the Lares were a part of his religion.

CHAPTER V.

But I ought to be hard at work preparing myself for Cambridge. The
deuce! how can I? The point in academical education on which I require
most preparation is Greek composition. I come to my father, who, one
might think, was at home enough in this. But rare indeed it is to find a
great scholar who is a good teacher.

My dear father, if one is content to take you in your own way, there
never was a more admirable instructor for the heart, the h