iting for an answer, Francis withdrew into an inner apartment,
and brought out the required sum for his brother's subsistence for two
months. George remonstrated, but Francis was positive; he had been saving,
and his stock was ample for his simple habits without it.

"Besides, you forget we are partners, and in the end I shall be a gainer."

George yielded to his wants and his brother's entreaties, and he gave him
great credit for the disinterestedness of the act. Several weeks passed
without any further allusion to this disagreeable subject, which had at
least the favorable result of making George more guarded and a better
student.

The brothers, from this period, advanced gradually in those distinctive
qualities which were to mark the future men; George daily improving in
grace and attraction, Francis, in an equal ratio, receding from those very
attainments which it was his too great desire to possess. In the education
of his sons, General Denbigh had preserved the appearance of impartiality;
his allowance to each was the same: they were at the same college, they
had been at the same school; and if Frank did not improve as much as his
younger brother, it was unquestionably his own obstinacy and stupidity,
and surely not want of opportunity or favor.

Such, then, were the artificial and accidental causes, which kept a noble,
a proud, an acute but a diseased mind, in acquirements much below another
every way its inferior, excepting in the happy circumstance of wanting
those very excellences, the excess and indiscreet management of which
proved the ruin instead of the blessing of their possessor.

The duke would occasionally rouse himself from his lethargy, and complain
to the father, that the heir of his honors was far inferior to his younger
brother in acquirements, and remonstrate against the course which produced
such an unfortunate inequality. On these occasions a superficial statement
of his system from the general met the objection; they cost the same
money, and he was sure he not only wished but did everything an indulgent
parent could, to render Francis worthy of his future honors. Another evil
of the admission of feelings of partiality, in the favor of one child, to
the prejudice of another, is that the malady is contagious as well as
lasting: it exists without our own knowledge, and it seldom fails to
affect those around us. The uncle soon learnt to distinguish George as the
hope of the family, yet Francis