afford, for good or evil, according as the novel or the play elevates
the understanding and ennobles the passions, or merely corrupts the
fancy and lowers the standard of human nature. But of all that Roland
desired him to be taught, the son remained as ignorant as before. Among
the other misfortunes of this ominous marriage, Roland's wife had
possessed all the superstitions of a Roman Catholic Spaniard; and with
these the boy had unconsciously intermingled doctrines far more dreary,
imbibed from the dark paganism of the Gitanos.

Roland had sought a Protestant for his son's tutor. The preceptor was
nominally a Protestant,--a biting derider of all superstitions, indeed!
He was such a Protestant as some defender of Voltaire's religion says
the Great Wit would have been had he lived in a Protestant country. The
Frenchman laughed the boy out of his superstitions, to leave behind them
the sneering scepticism of the Encyclopedie, without those redeeming
ethics on which all sects of philosophy are agreed, but which,
unhappily, it requires a philosopher to comprehend.

This preceptor was doubtless not aware of the mischief he was doing; and
for the rest, he taught his pupil after his own system,--a mild and
plausible one, very much like the system we at home are recommended to
adopt: "Teach the understanding,--all else will follow;" "Learn to read
something, and it will all come right;" "Follow the bias of the pupil's
mind,--thus you develop genius, not thwart it." Mind, understanding,
genius,--fine things! But to educate the whole man you must educate
something more than these. Not for want of mind, understanding, genius,
have Borgias and Neros left their names as monuments of horror to
mankind. Where, in all this teaching, was one lesson to warm the heart
and guide the soul?