powerless for their own peace, not the less heap up for the sons coming
after, in the weak but unquestioned fancy that possession will do for
them what it could not do for their fathers and mothers. Richard was
above such stupidity. He had early come to see that the best thing money
could do for his son, was to help in preparing him for some work fit to
employ what faculty had been given him, in accordance with the tastes
also given him. He saw, the last thing a foolish father will see, that
the best a father can do, is to enable his son to earn his livelihood in
the exercise of a genial and righteous labor. He saw that possession
generates artificial and enfeebling wants, overlaying and smothering the
God-given necessities of our nature, whence alone issue golden hopes and
manly endeavors.

He had therefore been in no haste to draw from his son a declaration of
choice as to profession. When every man shall feel in himself a call to
this or that, and scarce needs make a choice, the generations will be
well served; but that is not yet, and what Walter was fit for was not
yet quite manifest. It was only clear to the father that his son must
labor for others with a labor, if possible, whose reflex action should
be life to himself. Agriculture seemed inadequate to the full employment
of the gifts which, whether from paternal partiality or genuine insight,
he believed his son to possess; neither had Walter shown inclination or
aptitude for any department of it. All Richard could do, therefore, was
to give him such preparation as would be fundamentally available for any
superstructure: he might, he hoped, turn to medicine or the law. Partly
for financial reasons, he sent him to Edinburgh.

There Walter neither distinguished nor disgraced himself, and developed
no inclination to one more than another of the careers open to a young
man of education. He read a good deal, however, and showed taste in