etter throw a youth at once into the wider sphere of a
capital--provided you there secure to his social life the ordinary
checks of good company, the restraints imposed by the presence of
decorous women, and men of grave years and dignified repute--than
confine him to the exclusive society of youths of his own age, the
age of wild spirits and unreflecting imitation, unless he cling to the
safeguard which is found in hard reading, less by the book-knowledge it
bestows than by the serious and preoccupied mind which it abstracts from
the coarser temptations."

But Lionel, younger in character than in years, was too boyish as yet to
be safely consigned to those trials of tact and temper which await the
neophyte who enters on life through the doors of a mess-room. His pride
was too morbid, too much on the alert for offence; his frankness too
crude, his spirit too untamed by the insensible discipline of social
commerce.

Quoth the observant man of the world: "Place his honour in his own
keeping, and he will carry it about with him on full cock, to blow off
a friend's head or his own before the end of the first month. Huffy!
decidedly huffy! and of all causes that disturb regiments, and induce
courts-martial, the commonest cause is a huffy lad! Pity! for that
youngster has in him the right metal,--spirit and talent that should
make him a first-rate soldier. It would be time well spent that should
join professional studies with that degree of polite culture which gives
dignity and cures dulness. I must get him out of London, out of England;
cut him off from his mother's apron-strings, and the particular friends
of his poor father who prowl unannounced into the widow's drawing-room.
He shall go to Paris; no better place to learn military theories, and
be civilized out of huffy dispositions. No doubt my old friend, the
chevalier, who has the art strategic at his fingerends, might be induced
to take him en pension, direct his studies, and keep him out of harm's
way. I can secure to him the entree into the circles of the rigid old
Faubourg St. Germain, where manners are best bred, and household ties
most respected. Besides, as I am so often at Paris myself, I shall have
him under my eye, and a few years there, spent in completing him as man,
may bring him nearer to that marshal's baton which every recruit should
have in his eye, than if I started him at once a raw boy, unable to take
care of himself as an ensign, and unfitted, sav