"Hegh, sir, now you ha the bra time before you; you maun een try and be as geud as _he_. And if life last, ye wull too--for there never waur a bad ane of that stock. Wi' heads kindly stup'd to the least, and lifted manfu' oop to the heighest--that ye all war' sin ye came from the Ark. Blessins on the ould name--though little pelf goes with it--it sounds on the peur man's ear like a bit o' gould!" "Do you not see now," said Roland, as we turned away, "what we owe to a name, and what to our forefathers?--do you not see why the remotest ancestor has a right to our respect and consideration--for he was a parent? 'Honour your parents'--the law does not say, 'Honour your children!' If a child disgrace us, and the dead, and the sanctity of this great heritage of their virtues--_the name_;--if he does--" Roland stopped short, and added fervently, "But you are my heir now--I have no fear! What matters one foolish old man's sorrow?--the name, that property of generations, is saved, thank Heaven--the name!" Now the riddle was solved, and I understood why, amidst all his natural grief for a son's loss, that proud father was consoled. For he was less himself a father than a son--son to the long dead. From every grave, where a progenitor slept, he had heard a parent's voice. He could bear to be bereaved, if the forefathers were not dishonoured. Roland was more than half a Roman--the son might still cling to his household affections, but the _lares_ were a part of his religion. CHAPTER L. But I ought to be hard at work, preparing myself for Cambridge. The deuce!--how can I? The point in academical education on which I require most preparation is Greek composition. I come to my father, who, one might think, was at home enough in this. But rare indeed is it to find a great scholar who is a good teacher. My dear father! if one is content to take you in your own way, there never was a more admirable instructor for the heart, the head, the principles, or the tastes--in your own way, when you have discovered that there is some one sore to be healed--one defect to be repaired; and you have rubbed your spectacles, and got your hand fairly into that recess between your frill and your waistcoat. But to go to you, cut and dry, monotonously, regularly--book and exercise in hand--to see the mournful patience with which you tear yourself from that great volume of Cardan in the very honeymoon of possession--and then to note those mild eyebrows gradually distend themselves into perplexed diagonals, over some false quantity or some barbarous collocation--till there steal forth that horrible "Papæ!" which means more on your lips than I am sure it ever did when Latin was a live language, and "Papæ!" a natural and unpedantic ejaculation!--no, I would sooner blunder through the dark by myself a thousand times, than light my rush-light at the lamp of that Phlegethonian "Papæ!"