Mr. Annesley is a very sweet young man, and he too was happy enough in our friendly circle to leave us with regret, which expressed itself silently in a fine and speaking countenance. We said farewell. The morning saw our visitors set out at so early an hour that the track of their carriage wheels alone reported of them when we met at breakfast. Is there one bright, breathless, listening joy that ever hung upon expected happiness which is not familiar to my memory; and is not that memory too a faithful register of every pang that severed love could teach the heart? How is it then, I wonder, that a tear is left for minor griefs? Yet tears will flow; and I felt the difference between the gladsome merriment of approach, when our young friends were introduced by Mrs. Fitzroy, and the melancholy of their departing hour.
Still we are not bereaved of our guests all at once, though I grieve to add that another week will deprive me of dear Augusta Fitzroy, and my charming Arthur. I have real pleasure in the hope of presenting the latter to you one of these days, and in the mean time I prepare you for finding him almost all that I desire to see him. Such a change I did not imagine possible, as has taken place in his mind since he has been with us. The materials were in existence, no doubt, but a London life has little need of heart, and, therefore, his remained hermetically sealed, except when brought into action by his inestimable friend young Falkland, whose letters, which Arthur prsserves like "leaves of the Sybil", have rendered me acquainted with his extra-ordinary virtues. Now in full exercise, my dear nephew's affections are the source of happiness to himself and delight to all around. His abilities are shining, and, as habit strengthens the power of applying them, I feel no doubt of his becoming an ornament to society, and filling the situation appointed for him by Providence so as to set an example worthy of imitation. Domestic anxiety at present weighs upon his spirits, proving at once an acuteness of feeling and exalted sense of rectitude, which promise a foundation of future character, delightful to anticipate.
I must speak of George Bentley before I conclude; and, to answer your inquiry in the first instance, I am wholly unconscious of any ground for his uncle's apprehensions, though had I been aware of any such before we set out, I should not have consented to his being of our Killarney party; however, as Mr. Bentley followed us, my anxiety was removed. The young man is a fine and uncommon character: you shall have a sketch of it as far as I can trace its peculiarities. George Bentley offers a remarkable instance to prove, that what climate is to the vegetable kingdom, such to man is the moral atmosphere by which he is surrounded in early life. The temperature and aspect will not indeed convert an oak into an elm; but as the sapling of either, or of any kind may be checked in its growth by the chill north-eastern blast, and turned aside from the natural tendency of its course; or, as the tender and languid seedling may be improved in strength by the care which tempers its exposure, and provides shelter for its weakness, just so may a particular bias of nature in the human mind be enfeebled or invigorated by circumstance, that powerful agent in the completion of its structure. Young Bentley came into the world with excellent faculties and dispositions, but nothing could be less favourable than that society in which they were to be unfolded. It is not the tutor's lessons, it is the manners and opinions which breathe around us, that impart the tone which distinguishes individuals from each other. Young Bentley was formed in a different mould of intellect from all his family, and soon discovered in books, a companionship which was denied in the circle of his immediate relations. As he advanced in years, his mind, stimulated by a general sense of hunger, rather than by any discrimination of appetite, sought food for the cravings of curiosity in a library of motley mixture, accruing from various professional hoards, and a medley of novels, annual registers, and magazines, accumulated in a series of generations, through family survivorship. He was not met at home by either literary tact or talent. No, nor by that sort of tact which sometimes supplies in a great degree, the defect of one and the other.
Let loose as it were in an immense common, without a guide to direct him in the choice of his pasture, he devoured with avidity whatever presented itself. He passed through school and university with distinguished success, less the meed of brilliant talent than the reward of diligent application, and, unfortunately for himself, was emancipated from the trammels of education long before his age would permit him to enter one of the learned professions for which he was designed. The interval between the termination of a young man's first course of scholastic discipline, and the commencement of his professional career, is perhaps by far the most important period of existence in determining his future fate, and no prudent parent should permit that interval to be a long one. The mind, relieved from its former habitual restraint, and not yet harnessed in a new pursuit, dashes wildly forward to revel in the charms of liberty, and woe to him who enjoys such length of holyday as to unfit him for returning to the toilsome track in which he must plod for daily bread. George Bentley employed the chasm in his course, chiefly in reading every thing upon which he could lay his hands in the region of fiction and romance. His college studies were ended before he had passed that awkward time of life, when neither child, nor man, the youth not knowing how to dispose of the disproportioned length of legs and arms by which he is encumbered, often flies from polished society in which he cannot expect to receive much notice; and young Bentley was too amiable, too aspiring a character to seek in low company the ease which he might have attained at the expense of morality. Thus while he was sliding into manhood, his days were principally occupied in solitude, amidst a heterogeneous mass of books, except during the hours of occasional meeting with his parents, brothers and sisters.
Inelegant, and unrefined in the habits of domestic economy, the circle of his relations presented not a single likeness to any of the pictures of imagination which were promiscuously piled in his memory. What he saw, did not in the least agree with what he imagined; but there where two powerful motives, though of opposite parentage, which co-operated to prevent him from making the humiliating confession, even to himself, that he could not trace the most distant resemblance in his mother and sisters, to the portraits which delighted him in story. These motives were the vice of pride, and the virtue of filial piety; and these combined, determined him to try every effort that was practicable in the way of twisting and turning, letting out and taking in, to fit some of the drapery with which his favourite novels abounded, on those forms which his affectionate heart would have gladly invested with whatever he found most attractive. It would not do: and he has at length given up the attempt, satisfied to respect and esteem, what he cannot admire; but the effect upon his mind of this war which I have described between his tastes and his fortunes, is singular. Let him describe character, whether in actual existence, or of abstract contemplation; and you would be surprised by the accuracy of his judgment, and the refinement of his taste; yet from having studied books more than men, and been debarred in early life from referring the rules which he learned, to any living examples which might have afforded a practical illustration of them, he seems at a loss in society, and gives one the idea of a person who had attained to a perfect skill in geography by mere inspection of maps, without ever having stirred from a close room in the heart of London. If such a person were suddenly brought to the coast, he would be confused, and quite unable for some time to follow the line of bays and harbours, creeks and head-lands, with which he was familiar on paper. When George Bentley, at a later period extended his acquaintance, and quitted home, a number of new varieties were presented to his view, in which he might have found specimens of every character; but the most impressible time of life had passed away, he did never possess, originally, the power of comparison in any vividness, and the absence of all encouragement to its exercise in youth, has rendered him slow, now that he is of maturer age, in adapting objects for the first time to his patterns. The eye accustomed only to painting, does not come at once to criticise sculpture; and a surgeon, who knows the whole anatomy of the living subject, which either is employed to represent, may be a dunce in both. The things are different, and will remain so, unless early habit and natural tact familiarize the mind in applying them to each other, and seeking similitudes between them. Young Bentley's mind and manners in fine do not amalgamate; one layer lies upon the other like a fineering, which does not make a part of the plank to which it is cemented, but is glued on to a material less fine than itself. He reasons more than he feels, is more solid than brilliant, and wants that beautiful lightning of the mind which plays sometimes round characters not half so intrinsically valuable as his, with fascinating illumination. Such is my brief sketch of 'poor George,' as his uncle calls him. The future is concealed in mist. If a child of mine ever love young Bentley well enough to marry him, she shall have my full consent, for I am sure of all the essentials that give security for substantial peace. The graces which he wants may be dispensed with. The virtues which he possesses are indispensible; but I shall avoid giving direction to the inclination of my girl, towards any particular objects, not because I do not think that many a parent might choose more wisely than young people do for themselves; but there is something perhaps inseparable from the human heart, which renders us more willing to excuse our own blunders, than those of even the people whom we love best. "Youth is easily deceived;" "love is blind," &c. Many of these flattering aphorisms occur to extenuate our own errors, while the question of "how did your experience fail, how did you commit a mistake?" arises in the heart, though it may not be expressed by the lips, of every young romancer, who, finding life a chequered scene in which the tessalæ of black and white, hold perpetual contrast, attributes to the influence of a friend's advice, the failure of those generally disappointed hopes that paint the marriage state in colours bright and fleeting as the imagination which supplies them.
This moment comes a letter from the India House, to say that my poor brother, General Douglas, has had so serious an attack of illness, that his voyage to England is hastened, and we are informed, that his arrival may be looked for immediately. How this event may operate at Glenalta, I cannot tell; but though "the noiseless tenour of my way" should be disturbed, I shall rejoice if it be permitted me to afford comfort and assistance to the invalid. Adieu, my Elizabeth.
Your faithful
Caroline Douglas.