Dick Gradus. In a snug corner, at a side table, observe that
shrewd-looking little fellow poring over his book; his features seem
represented by acute angles, and his head, which appears too heavy for
his body, represents all the thoughtfulness of age, like an ancient
fragment of Phidias or Praxiteles placed upon new shoulders by some
modern bust carver. Dick is the son of an eminent solicitor in a borough
town, who has raised himself into wealth and consequence by a strict
attention to the principles of interest: sharp practice, heavy
mortgages, loans on annuity, and post obits, have strengthened his list
of possessions till his influence is extended over half the county. The
proprietor of the borough, a good humoured sporting extravagant, has
been compelled to yield his influence in St. Stephen's to old Gradus,
that he may preserve his character at Newmarket, and continue his pack
and fox-hunting festivities at home. The representation of the place is
now disposed of to the best bidder, but the ambition of the father has
long since determined upon sending his son (when of age)
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into parliament--a promising candidate for the "loaves and fishes."
Richard Gradus, M.P.--you may almost perceive the senatorial honor
stamped upon the brow of the young aspirant; he has been early initiated
into the value of time and money; his lessons of thrift have been
practically illustrated by watching the operations of the law in his
father's office; his application to learning is not the result of an
innate love of literature, or the ambition of excelling his compeers,
but a cold, stiff, and formal desire to collect together materials
for the storehouse of his memory, that will enable him to pursue his
interested views and future operations on society with every prospect
of success. Genius has no participation in his studies: his knowledge
of Greek and Latin is grammatical and pedantic; he reads Livy, Tacitus,
Sallust, Caesar, Xenophon, Thucydides, in their original language;
boasts of his learning with a haughty mien and scornful look of
self-importance, and thinks this school-boy exercise of memory, this
mechanism of the mind, is to determine the line between genius and
stupidity; and has never taken into consideration that the mere
linguist, destitute of native powers, with his absurd parade of
scholastic knowledge, is a solitary barren plant, when opposed to the
higher occupations of the mind, to the flights of fancy, the da