, and lose their religion; for
nothing can ever support the desolation of the heart afterwards.

The greatest misfortune that can happen among relations is a different
way of bringing up, so as to set one another's opinions and characters
in an entirely new point of view. This often lets in an unwelcome
daylight on the subject, and breeds schisms, coldness, and incurable
heart-burnings in families. I have sometimes thought whether the
progress of society and march of knowledge does not do more harm in this
respect, by loosening the ties of domestic attachment, and preventing
those who are most interested in and anxious to think well of one
another from feeling a cordial sympathy and approbation of each
other's sentiments, manners, views, etc., than it does good by any real
advantage to the community at large. The son, for instance, is brought
up to the Church, and nothing can exceed the pride and pleasure the
father takes in him while all goes on well in this favourite direction.
His notions change, and he imbibes a taste for the Fine Arts. From
this moment there is an end of anything like the same unreserved
communication between them. The young man may talk with enthusiasm
of his 'Rembrandts, Correggios, and stuff': it is all _Hebrew_ to the
elder; and whatever satisfaction he may feel in the hearing of his son's
progress, or good wishes for his success, he is never reconciled to the
new pursuit, he still hankers after the first object that he had set
his mind upon. Again, the grandfather is a Calvinist, who never gets the
better of his disappointment at his son's going over to the Unitarian
side of the question. The matter rests here till the grandson, some
years after, in the fashion of the day and 'infinite agitation of men's
wit,' comes to doubt certain points in the creed in which he has
been brought up, and the affair is all abroad again. Here are three
generations made uncomfortable and in a manner set at variance by a
veering point of theology, and the officious, meddling biblical critics!
Nothing, on the other hand, can be more wretched or common than that
upstart pride and insolent good fortune which is ashamed of its origin;
nor are there many things more awkward than the situation of rich and
poor relations. Happy, much happier, are those tribes and people who
are confined to the same _caste_ and way of life from sire to son, where
prejudices are transmitted like instincts, and where the same unvarying
sta