The yearning of all ages, especially dotage, is for a relapse to the infantile state when all playthings were held in common. And this wisest of all places (in its own opinion) had a certain eccentric inclination towards the poetic perfection when it will be impossible to steal, because there will be nothing left worth stealing. Still everybody here stuck to his own rights, and would knock down anybody across them, though finding it very nice to talk as if others could have no such standing-point. Moreover, they had sufficient common-sense to begin with the right end foremost, and to take a tender interest in one another's goods, moveable, handy, and divisible; instead of hungering after hungry land, which feeds nobody, until itself well fed and tended, and is as useless without a master as a donkey or a man is. The knowledge of these rudiments of civilization was not yet lost at Springhaven; and while everybody felt and even proved his desire to share a neighbour's trouble, nobody meddled with any right of his, save his right to be assisted. Among them throve the old English feeling of respect for ancient families, which is nowadays called “toadyism” by those whom it baulks of robbery. To trade upon this good-will is almost as low a thing as any man can do, even when he does it for good uses. But to trade upon it, for the harm of those who feel it, and the ruin of his country, is without exception the very lowest--and this was what Caryl Carne was at. He looked at the matter in a wholly different light, and would have stabbed any man who put it as above; for his sense of honour was as quick and hot as it was crooked and misguided. His father had been a true Carne, of the old stamp--hot-blooded, headstrong, stubborn, wayward, narrow-minded, and often arrogant; but--to balance these faults and many others--truthful, generous, kind-hearted, affectionate, staunch to his friends, to his inferiors genial, loyal to his country, and respectful to religion. And he might have done well, but for two sad evils--he took a burdened property, and he plunged into a bad marriage.