eract the latter sensation.
George become a favorite, and Francis a neutral. The effect was easy to be
seen, and it was rapid, as it was indelible.

The feelings of Francis were sensitive to an extreme. He had more
quickness, more sensibility, more real talent than George; which enabled
him to perceive, and caused him to feel more acutely, the partiality of
his mother.

As yet, the engagements and duties of the general had kept his children
and, their improvements out of his sight; but at the ages of eleven and
twelve, the feelings of a father, began, to take pride in the possession
of his sons.

On his return from a foreign station, after an absence of two years, his
children were ordered from school to meet him. Francis had improved in
stature, but not in beauty; George had flourished in both.

The natural diffidence of the former was increased, by perceiving that he
was no favorite, and the effect began to show itself on manners at no time
engaging. He met his father with doubt, and he saw with anguish, that the
embrace received by his brother much exceeded in warmth that which had
been bestowed on himself.

"Lady Margaret," said the general to his wife, as he followed the boys as
they retired from the dinner table, with his eyes, "it is a thousand
pities George had not been the elder. _He_ would have graced a dukedom or
a throne. Frank is only fit for a parson."

This ill-judged speech was uttered sufficiently loud to be overheard by
both the sons: on the younger, it made a pleasurable sensation for the
moment. His father--his dear father, had thought him fit to be a king; and
his father must be a judge, whispered his native vanity; but all this time
the connexion between the speech and his brother's rights did not present
themselves to his mind. George loved this brother too well, too
sincerely, to have injured him even in thought; and so far as Francis was
concerned, his vanity was as blameless as it was natural.

The effect produced on the mind of Francis was different both in substance
and in degree. It mortified his pride, alarmed his delicacy, and wounded
his already morbid sensibility to such an extent, as to make him entertain
the romantic notion of withdrawing from the world, and of yielding a
birthright to one so every way more deserving of it than himself.

From this period might be dated an opinion of Francis's, which never
afterwards left him; he fancied he was doing injustice to another, and
t