rated. The two elder continued their
education at home, and Percival, at an earlier age than usual, went to
sea. The last was fortunate enough to have for his captain one of that
new race of naval officers who, well educated and accomplished, form a
notable contrast to the old heroes of Smollett. Percival, however,
had not been long in the service before the deaths of his two elder
brothers, preceded by that of his father, made him the head of his
ancient house, and the sole prop of his mother's earthly hopes. He
conquered with a generous effort the passion for his noble profession,
which service had but confirmed, and returned home with his fresh,
childlike nature uncorrupted, his constitution strengthened, his lively
and impressionable mind braced by the experience of danger and the
habits of duty, and quietly resumed his reading under Captain Greville,
who moved from the Hall to a small house in the village.

Now, the education he had received, from first to last, was less adapted
prematurely to quicken his intellect and excite his imagination than to
warm his heart and elevate, while it chastened, his moral qualities; for
in Lady Mary there was, amidst singular sweetness of temper, a high cast
of character and thought. She was not what is commonly called clever,
and her experience of the world was limited, compared to that of most
women of similar rank who pass their lives in the vast theatre of
London. But she became superior by a certain single-heartedness which
made truth so habitual to her that the light in which she lived rendered
all objects around her clear. One who is always true in the great duties
of life is nearly always wise. And Vernon, when he had fairly buried his
faults, had felt a noble shame for the excesses into which they had
led him. Gradually more and more wedded to his home, he dropped his old
companions. He set grave guard on his talk (his habits now required
no guard), lest any of the ancient levity should taint the ears of his
children. Nothing is more common in parents than their desire that their
children should escape their faults. We scarcely know ourselves till
we have children; and then, if we love them duly, we look narrowly into
failings that become vices, when they serve as examples to the young.

The inborn gentleman, with the native courage and spirit and horror
of trick and falsehood which belong to that chivalrous abstraction,
survived almost alone in Vernon St. John; and his b