was under fifty miles and there was a direct coach, so that the journey
was easy; there was not time, therefore, for the novelty to wear off
either on the part of the young man or of his parents. George liked the
fresh country air and green fields after the darkness to which he had
been so long accustomed in Paternoster Row, which then, as now, was a
narrow gloomy lane rather than a street. Independently of the pleasure
of seeing the familiar faces of the farmers and villagers, he liked also
being seen and being congratulated on growing up such a fine-looking and
fortunate young fellow, for he was not the youth to hide his light under
a bushel. His uncle had had him taught Latin and Greek of an evening; he
had taken kindly to these languages and had rapidly and easily mastered
what many boys take years in acquiring. I suppose his knowledge gave him
a self-confidence which made itself felt whether he intended it or not;
at any rate, he soon began to pose as a judge of literature, and from
this to being a judge of art, architecture, music and everything else,
the path was easy. Like his father, he knew the value of money, but he
was at once more ostentatious and less liberal than his father; while yet
a boy he was a thorough little man of the world, and did well rather upon
principles which he had tested by personal experiment, and recognised as
principles, than from those profounder convictions which in his father
were so instinctive that he could give no account concerning them.

His father, as I have said, wondered at him and let him alone. His son
had fairly distanced him, and in an inarticulate way the father knew it
perfectly well. After a few years he took to wearing his best clothes
whenever his son came to stay with him, nor would he discard them for his
ordinary ones till the young man had returned to London. I believe old
Mr Pontifex, along with his pride and affection, felt also a certain fear
of his son, as though of something which he could not thoroughly
understand, and whose ways, notwithstanding outward agreement, were