FRUITLESS REGRETS AND APPLES OF SODOM

From 'Mansfield Park'

These were the circumstances and the hopes which gradually brought their
alleviation to Sir Thomas, deadening his sense of what was lost, and in
part reconciling him to himself; though the anguish arising from the
conviction of his own errors in the education of his daughters was never
to be entirely done away.

Too late he became aware how unfavorable to the character of any young
people must be the totally opposite treatment which Maria and Julia had
been always experiencing at home, where the excessive indulgence and
flattery of their aunt had been continually contrasted with his own
severity. He saw how ill he had judged, in expecting to counteract what
was wrong in Mrs. Norris by its reverse in himself, clearly saw that he
had but increased the evil, by teaching them to repress their spirits
in his presence so as to make their real disposition unknown to him,
and sending them for all their indulgences to a person who had been able
to attach them only by the blindness of her affection and the excess of
her praise.

Here had been grievous mismanagement; but, bad as it was, he gradually
grew to feel that it had not been the most direful mistake in his plan
of education. Something must have been wanting _within_, or time would
have worn away much of its ill effect. He feared that principle, active
principle, had been wanting; that they had never been properly taught to
govern their inclinations and tempers, by that sense of duty which can
alone suffice. They had been instructed theoretically in their religion,