s that youth is like spring, an overpraised
season--delightful if it happen to be a favoured one, but in practice
very rarely favoured and more remarkable, as a general rule, for biting
east winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what
we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits. Fontenelle at the age of
ninety, being asked what was the happiest time of his life, said he did
not know that he had ever been much happier than he then was, but that
perhaps his best years had been those when he was between fifty-five and
seventy-five, and Dr Johnson placed the pleasures of old age far higher
than those of youth. True, in old age we live under the shadow of Death,
which, like a sword of Damocles, may descend at any moment, but we have
so long found life to be an affair of being rather frightened than hurt
that we have become like the people who live under Vesuvius, and chance
it without much misgiving.

CHAPTER VII

A few words may suffice for the greater number of the young people to
whom I have been alluding in the foregoing chapter. Eliza and Maria, the
two elder girls, were neither exactly pretty nor exactly plain, and were
in all respects model young ladies, but Alethea was exceedingly pretty
and of a lively, affectionate disposition, which was in sharp contrast
with those of her brothers and sisters. There was a trace of her
grandfather, not only in her face, but in her love of fun, of which her
father had none, though not without a certain boisterous and rather
coarse quasi-humour which passed for wit with many.

John grew up to be a good-looking, gentlemanly fellow, with features a
trifle too regular and finely chiselled. He dressed himself so nicely,
had such good address, and stuck so steadily to his books that he became
a favourite with his masters; he had, however, an instinct for diplomacy,
and was less popular with the boys. His father, in spite of the lectures
he would at times read him, was in a way proud of him as he grew older;
he saw in him, moreover, one who would probably develop into a good man
of business, and in whose hands the prospects of his house would not be
likely to decline. John knew how to humour his father, and was at a
comparatively early age admitted to as much of his confidence as it was
in his nature to bestow on anyone.

His brother Theobald was no match for him, knew it, and accepted his
fate. He was not so good-looking as his brother, nor wa