LAND--THE CRITICAL TIME--VAUNTING
POLLS--ONE THING WANTED--A FATHER'S BLESSING--MIRACLE OF ART--THE POPE'S
HOUSE--THE YOUNG ENTHUSIAST--PICTURES OF ENGLAND--PERSIST AND WRESTLE--OF
THE LITTLE DARK MAN

The eldest son! The regard and affection which my father entertained for
his first-born were natural enough, and appeared to none more so than
myself, who cherished the same feelings towards him. What he was as a
boy the reader already knows, for the reader has seen him as a boy; fain
would I describe him at the time of which I am now speaking, when he had
attained the verge of manhood, but the pen fails me, and I attempt not
the task; and yet it ought to be an easy one, for how frequently does his
form visit my mind's eye in slumber and in wakefulness, in the light of
day and in the night watches; but last night I saw him in his beauty and
his strength; he was about to speak, and my ear was on the stretch, when
at once I awoke, and there was I alone, and the night storm was howling
amidst the branches of the pines which surround my lonely dwelling:
'Listen to the moaning of the pine, at whose root thy hut is
fastened,'--a saying that, of wild Finland, in which there is wisdom; I
listened and thought of life and death. . . . Of all human beings that I
have ever known, that elder brother was the most frank and generous, ay,
and the quickest and readiest, and the best adapted to do a great thing
needful at the critical time, when the delay of a moment would be fatal.
I have known him dash from a steep bank into a stream in his full dress,
and pull out a man who was drowning; yet there were twenty others bathing
in the water, who might have saved him by putting out a hand, without
inconvenience to themselves, which, however, they did not do, but stared
with stupid surprise at the drowning one's struggles. Yes, whilst some
shouted from the bank to those in the water to save the drowning one, and
those in the water did nothing, my brother neither shouted nor stood
still, but dashed from the bank and did the one thing needful, which,
under such circumstances, not one man in a million would have done. Now,
who can wonder that a brave old man should love a son like this, and
prefer him to any other?

'My boy, my own boy, you are the very image of myself, the day I took off
my coat in the park to fight Big Ben,' said my father, on meeting his son
wet and dripping, immediately after his bold feat. And who cannot excuse
the h