most perfect kind of liberty.

Though this was in great part the effect of having such a head of the
family, the details of management could not but chiefly depend upon
the mother, and Lady Patteson was equally loved for her tenderness
and respected for her firmness. 'She was, indeed,' writes her
brother, 'a sweet and pious person, of the most affectionate, loving
disposition, without a grain of selfishness, and of the stoutest
adherence to principle and duty. Her tendency was to deal with her
children fondly, but this never interfered with good training and
discipline. What she felt right, she insisted on, at whatever pain
to herself.'

She had to deal with strong characters. Coleridge, or Coley, to give
him the abbreviation by which he was known not only through childhood
but through life, was a fair little fellow, with bright deep-blue
eyes, inheriting much of his nature from her and her family, but not
by any means a model boy. He was, indeed, deeply and warmly
affectionate, but troublesome through outbreaks of will and temper,
showing all the ordinary instinct of trying how far the authorities
for the time being will endure resistance; sufficiently indolent of
mind to use his excellent abilities to save exertion of intellect;
passionate to kicking and screaming pitch, and at times showing the
doggedness which is such a trial of patience to the parent. To this
Lady Patteson 'never yielded; the thing was to be done, the point
given up, the temper subdued, the mother to be obeyed, and all this
upon a principle sooner understood than parents suppose.'

There were countless instances of the little boy's sharp, stormy
gusts of passion, and his mother's steady refusal to listen to his 'I