Hard must be the heart and selfish the mind which is not softened and expanded by communion with sweet infancy. The innocence of childhood is the tenderest, and not the least potent remonstrance against the vices and the errors of grown man, if he would but listen to the lesson and take it to his heart. Seldom, too seldom, do we do so; and I cannot say that it was the case with Sir Francis Tyrrell; but still he could not undergo that influence without losing something of his harshness from the gentle presence of the child. To Lady Tyrrell the birth of her infant was a renewal of hope and a solid store of happiness. She had a fresh object before her, a new motive for exertion and endurance; and as she gazed upon his infant face, she promised herself, for his sake, to bear all and to strive for all. Her health, however, gave way under constant irritation; and as the boy grew up, his father lost that pride in him which he had before experienced; and though he had fondled the infant, he chided and railed at the child; while Lady Tyrrell, who was, perhaps, inclined to be a little over-indulgent to her only son, roused herself to defend him from the bitter and unmerited reproaches of his father, when, perhaps, in her own case, she might have borne those reproaches in silence. Every point of his education became a subject of contention. While a child, he had been to Sir Francis a mere plaything; but the moment that his reason began to expand, his father looked upon him as a new object of tyranny, and Lady Tyrrell would often sit and gaze with melancholy eyes upon her son's face, thinking of his future fate, and sorrowing, from the sad experience of her own, over the long and miserable years to be passed under the sway of such a man as his father. She exerted herself to conquer even her own affection for the child, and the selfishness of that affection. In order as much to remove him from home, and to give him the blessing of other society, as to ensure him a good education, she determined, if possible, to send him to school, though she thereby lost the comfort of his presence, and the continual solace and relief of all his sports, and words, and looks. Sir Francis, however, on the contrary, did not choose to sacrifice his own pleasure. He did not choose to lose the new object of tyranny which he had acquired. He declared he intended to have a tutor in the house when his son was old enough to learn anything; and the very wish which his wife expressed, that the boy should be sent to school, only hardened his determination to keep him at home. He had no confidence in virtue or in sincerity of any kind; and although he knew that Lady Tyrrell was, when he married her, as frank and open as the day, he still could not persuade himself that she acted towards him without guile.