them, as the case might be, sprang from that remarkable race who called
themselves at one time, with His permission, the chosen children of God.

I think these very characteristics of mine repelled my father and jarred
on his nervous temperament, endangering that outward calm which it was
his pride and care to preserve as necessary to high-bred demeanor, and
thus intrenching on his ideas of personal dignity. Yet, with strange
inconsistency, it was her very indulgence of these peculiarities that
inclined him most strongly to Constance Glen, and finally, I am well
convinced, determined him on making her his wife, as one well suited to
secure the welfare of his turbulent and incomprehensible child, his
"rebellious Miriam," as he sometimes called me when milder words availed
not.

He had, as I have said, an "English" horror of scenes and excitement of
any kind. He was conservative in every way. He believed in the British
classics, and would not admit that any thing could ever equal, far less
surpass them (dreary bores that many of them are to me!). Walter Scott's
novels were the only ones of later days he ever allowed himself to read
approvingly; for, once being beguiled, against his will almost, into
sitting up late at night to finish a new work called "Pelham," he
frowned down all allusion to the book or its author ever afterward, as
derogatory to his dignity.

"Bulwer and Disraeli are literary coxcombs," he said, "who ought not to
be encouraged, and who are trying to undermine wholesome English
literature."

"O father," I ventured to observe on one occasion, "'Vivian Grey' is
splendid. It is a delightful dream, more vivid than life itself; it is