of my house, owed suit and service to him who was its head; and he
assured me, that twice in a year, on _my_ birthday and on _his_, he
had a right, strictly speaking, to make me lie down, and to set his
foot upon my neck; lastly, by a law not so rigorous, but valid amongst
gentlemen,--viz., "by the _comity_ of nations,"--it seems I owed eternal
deference to one so much older than myself, so much wiser, stronger,
braver, more beautiful, and more swift of foot. Something like all
this in tendency I had already believed, though I had not so minutely
investigated the modes and grounds of my duty. By temperament, and
through natural dedication to despondency, I felt resting upon me
always too deep and gloomy a sense of obscure duties attached to life,
that I never _should_ be able to fulfil; a burden which I could not
carry, and which yet I did not know how to throw off. Glad, therefore,
I was to find the whole tremendous weight of obligations--the law and
the prophets--all crowded into this one pocket command, "Thou shalt
obey thy brother as God's vicar upon earth." For now, if, by any future
stone levelled at him who had called me a "buck," I should chance to
draw blood, perhaps I might not have committed so serious a trespass
on any rights which he could plead; but if I _had_, (for on this subject
my convictions were still cloudy,) at any rate, the duty I might have
violated in regard to this general brother, in right of Adam, was
cancelled when it came into collision with my paramount duty to this
liege brother of my own individual house.

From this day, therefore, I obeyed all my brother's military commands
with the utmost docility; and happy it made me that every sort of
doubt, or question, or opening for demur was swallowed up in the unity
of this one papal principle, discovered by my brother, viz., that all
rights and duties of casuistry were transferred from me to himself.
_His_ was the judgment--_his_ was the responsibility; and to me belonged