Chapter 4

SHOWING THE UPS AND DOWNS, THE HOPES AND FEARS, AND THE VAGARIES OF
LOVE, SOME VIEWS OF DEATH, AND AN ACCOUNT OF AN INHERITANCE.

From my twentieth to my twenty-third year no event occurred of any
great moment. The day I became of age my father settled on me a
regular allowance of a thousand a year, and I make no doubt I should
have spent my time much as other young men had it not been for the
peculiarity of my birth, which I now began to see was wanting in a
few of the requisites to carry me successfully through a struggle
for place with a certain portion of what is called the great world.
While most were anxious to trace themselves into obscurity, there
was a singular reluctance to effecting the object as clearly and as
distinctly as it was in my power to do. From all which, as well as
from much other testimony, I have been led to infer that the doses
of mystification which appear to be necessary to the happiness of
the human race require to be mixed with an experienced and a
delicate hand. Our organs, both physically and morally, are so
fearfully constituted that they require to be protected from
realities. As the physical eye has need of clouded glass to look
steadily at the sun so it would seem the mind's eye has also need of
something smoky to look steadily at truth. But, while I avoided
laying open the secret of my heart to Anna, I sought various
opportunities to converse with Dr. Etherington and my father on
those points which gave me the most concern. From the first, I heard
principles which went to show that society was of necessity divided
into orders; that it was not only impolitic but wicked to weaken the
barriers by which they were separated; that Heaven had its seraphs
and cherubs, its archangels and angels, its saints and its merely
happy, and that, by obvious induction, this world ought to have its
kings, lords, and commons. The usual winding-up of all the Doctor's
essays was a lamentation on the confusion in classes that was
visiting England as a judgment. My ancestor, on the other hand,
cared little for social classification, or for any other
conservatory expedient but force. On this topic he would talk all
day, regiments and bayonets glittering in every sentence. When most
eloquent on this theme he would cry (like Mr. Manners Sutton),
"ORDER--order!" nor can I recall a single disquisition that did not
end with, "Alas, Jack, property is in danger!"

I shall not say that my mind entirely escaped confusion among these
conflicting opinions, although I luckily got a glimpse of one
important truth, for both the commentators cordially agreed in
fearing and, of necessity, in hating the mass of their fellow-
creatures. My own natural disposition was inclining to