The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 8: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

see : am 2 THE MYSTERIES OF THE COURT. collegiate education, to fit them for such professions | to look up to them with perhaps too much defe- as they might respectively be led by taste or oppor- | rence, from asense that they may in process of tunity to adopt, and in which the family interest | time be placed in the position of destiny’s arbiters was likely to push them on. They were twohand-|in respect to the worldly career of those some youths,—reflecting in their own persons the} whom the laws of primogeniture and entail thus ‘masculine beauty of a fine and haughty race,— | throw in dependence upon them. Moreover, there with dispositions naturally good, but nevertheless | is often, even in the breasts of the best-disposed already somewhat warped by a fond father’s too | youths, a spirited and prideful disinclination to be great indulgence, as well as by the * gah} of | taunted with being “bookworms” and “ saints,” that sphere of life in which they were born, and in} when elder brothers invite them to partake in the midst of which they had been caressed, petted, | pleasures and amusements: and thus is it that and flattered. well-principled lads are frequently led, by a sense At the time when they entered Oxford Univer- | of false shame, to quit pursuits in reality most sity, Hugh, the elder, was in the opening of his | congenial to their tastes, and deviate into others twenty-first year—Bertram, the younger, a little | but little consonant with their inclinations. To past eighteen. They were of equal stature: but | all these varied but potent influences was Bertram Hugh was more strongly and stoutly built than | Vivian subjected; and when once the ice was his brother,—not merely because his additional two | broken,—when once, in other words, he had left his years had given to his form more manly develop- | studies to accompany his brother and that brother’s ments, but because the ‘younger was naturally of a; boon companions amidst scenes of pleasure—the more slender and more gracefully symmetrical | compunctious feelings attendant thereon gradually figure. ‘Though it was impossible not to be struck | wore off. Not however that Bertram became in- by the haughtily handsome countenanee of the elder, | yeterately dissipated, or that he abandoned himself it was equally impossible to avoid drawing a com- | so completely to pleasure, as did Hugh: but still he was not so steady as he ought to have been. parison in favour of the more delicately chiselled The consequences were, that at the end of the first Grecian profile of the latter. The expression -of | Hugh’s features was entirely of the sense: that of | year of the two young men’s collegiate experience, Bertram’s of the sentiment. While the former/}they found that they had far outstripped their ‘pecuniary means, and that they had contracted indicated a love of pleasure, strong passions, and a ‘debts which they dared not mention to their disposition which was sensuous as well aspreud,- —that of the latter denoted a rare intelligence father, and which nevertheless without his suc- blended with its pride; and the classic .curbof the |cour “they had~not* the remotest chance of liqui- short upper ‘lip declared. an instinctive “digdainvot |-dating falsehood. Hugh’s forehead was laxge, prominent, © ~The University “tradesmen were not however and massivethat of Bertram highand? ied=|clamorots. It was-sufficient for them to know the former pale from a too eatly acquaintance wpith | that ‘the Vivians belongéd to a family in which dissipation—the latter pale likewise, buby at ‘there were lofty titles that bespoke the accom- Genius itself had stamped ‘bat: p lor there. Lhus.|paniment of great wealth; and they considered the brow of theelder brothér seemed one on which passion and pleasure might in after years trace their lines; while that of the younger brother had | Hugh pursued his career of extravagance as if he all the immortality of the intellect predicted im its | were actual heir to the Marquisate of Viviandale marble dream. ‘The eyes of ‘both were dark; | from which the family lustre was derived,—be- those of the elder flashing with all worldly feelings, | tween which and himself there were nevertheless —those of the younger with ‘the lightnings of the | great gulfs fixed: while Bertram, though without mind. Hugh’s hair was black, strong even ‘to| the moral ‘courage to stop short in the pathway coarseness, and without ‘a gloss’: ‘that of Bertram | of ruin, was at times distracted by the sense of was of raven tichness, shining with its own natural | those difficulties that were gradually enmeshing velvety brightness, and clustering in excessive lux- ‘him dn a web which he feared to be inextricable. uriance over the ‘small, delicate, well-folded ears, | He had not, we say, the moral courage to check and by the sidesof ‘the alabaster temples. -Alto- | himself: that feeling of false shame, and that idea gether, the elder brother wasione whosefineappear- | of more or less dependence on his brother, to ance could not fail to command ‘admiration, but which we have already alluded, prevented him nothing else: while that of the younger brother from asserting the natural rectitude of his position inspired the same feeling, but blended with interest, | and courageously obeying its impulses in spite of and almost love. aati Fc all other consider&tions. But fortunately for him, On entering upon theif college life, Hugh soon | something occurred which turned all his thoughts — formed acquaintances of dispositions congenial with | and ail his feelings into a completely new channel. themselves tolerably safe in being sooner or later paid by*some member of this aristocratic family. his own, and gave‘himself up to manly sports by| The brothers had been about a year at the day and dissipated pleasures by night. Hunting, | University—they were now respectively somewhat racing, boating, fishing, and cock-fighting, con- | past twenty-one and nineteen—when Bertram ac- stituted the former: revelling, cards, arid visits to | cidentally formed the acquaintance of a half-pay forbidden haunts of pleasurable vice, composed the Captain in the Army and his daughter. The latter. On the other hand, Bertram—led by taste | gentleman, whose name was Lacey, was stricken as well as by a sense of duty—applied himself to|in years: he had married late in life—one child his studies: but-he could not altogether escape the | was the issue of this allianee—but the event which influences of an elder brother’s example. In aris- | rendered him a father, made him also a widower. tocratic families, where the casualties of naturé | His means were limited: but he had done his best may raise elder brothers to the possession of heres 'to rear his darling Eliza in a becoming mamner. ditary titles and estates, younger brothers are apt ' He had stinted hiniself to give her a good educa-