We do not mean to say that the boy was heartless—boys rarely are so, we might almost say never—nor that the impulses of his heart were toward evil rather than good; far from it. His heart, like all young and untainted hearts, was full of noble impulses—but they were _impulses_; full of fresh springing generous desires, of gracious sympathies and lofty aspirations—but he had not one principle—he never had been taught to question one impulse, before acting upon it—he never had learned to check one desire, to doubt the genuineness of one sympathy, to moderate the eagerness of one aspiration. He never had been brought to suspect that there were such virtues as self-control, or self-devotion; such vices as selfishness or self-abandonment—in a word, he never had so much as heard That Right is right, and that to follow Right Were wisdom, in the scorn of consequence— and therefore he was, at the day of which we write, even what he was; and thereafter, what we propose to show you. At the time when the youthful heir had attained his seventeenth year, the great object of his father’s life was accomplished; the fortunes of the family were so far at least retrieved, that if the St. Aubyns no longer aspired, as of old, to be the first or wealthiest family of the county, they were at least able to maintain the household on that footing of generous liberality and hospitable ease which has been at all times the pride and passion of the English country gentleman. For many years Sir Miles had undergone the severest privations, and it was only by the endurance of actual poverty within doors, that he was enabled to maintain that footing abroad, without which he could scarcely have preserved his position in society. For many years the park had been neglected, the gardens overrun with weeds and brambles, the courts grass-grown, and the house itself dilapidated, literally from the impossibility of supporting domestics sufficiently numerous to perform the necessary labors of the estate. During much of this period it was to the beasts of the forest, the fowl of the moorland, and the fish of the streams, that the household of Widecomb had looked for their support; nor did the table of the banneret himself boast any liquor more generous than that afforded by the ale vats of March and October. Throughout the whole of this dark and difficult time, however, the stout old soldier had never suffered one particle of that ceremonial, which he deemed essential as well to the formation as the preservation of the character of a true gentleman, to be relaxed or neglected by his diminished household.