with the cook, and revolutionized our dinner table. All the French
newspapers were sent to him by a London agent. He altered the
arrangements of his bed-room; no servant but his own valet was
permitted to enter it. Family portraits that hung there, were turned
to the walls, and portraits of French actresses and Italian singers
were stuck to the back of the canvasses. Then he displaced a beautiful
little ebony cabinet which had been in the family three hundred years;
and set up in its stead a Cyprian temple of his own, in miniature,
with crystal doors, behind which hung locks of hair, rings, notes
written on blush-coloured paper, and other love-tokens kept as
sentimental relics. His influence became all-pervading among us. He
seemed to communicate to the house the change that had taken place in
himself, from the reckless, racketty young Englishman to the
super-exquisite foreign dandy. It was as if the fiery, effervescent
atmosphere of the Boulevards of Paris had insolently penetrated into
the old English mansion, and ruffled and infected its quiet native
air, to the remotest corners of the place.

My father was even more dismayed than displeased by the alteration in
my brother's habits and manners--the eldest son was now farther from
his ideal of what an eldest son should be, than ever. As for friends
and neighbours, Ralph was heartily feared and disliked by them, before
he had been in the house a week. He had an ironically patient way of
listening to their conversation; an ironically respectful manner of
demolishing their old-fashioned opinions, and correcting their
slightest mistakes, which secretly aggravated them beyond endurance.
It was worse still, when my father, in despair, tried to tempt him
into marriage, as the one final chance of working his reform; and
invited half the marriageable young ladies of our acquaintance to the
house, for his especial benefit.