These two friends were, at this time, travelling from Oxford to Vivian Hall (in ----shire), the superb seat of the Vivian family, to which Vivian was heir. Mr. Russell, though he was but a few years older than Vivian, had been his tutor at college; and by an uncommon transition, had, from his tutor, become his intimate friend. After a pause, Vivian resumed, “Now I think of it, Russell, you are to blame, if I have any faults. Don’t you say, that every thing is to be done by education? And are not you--though by much too young, and infinitely too handsome, for a philosopher--are not you my guide, philosopher, and friend?” “But I have had the honour to be your guide, philosopher, and friend, only for these three years,” said Russell. “I believe in the rational, but not in the magical, power of education. How could I do, or undo, in three years, the work of the preceding seventeen?” “Then, if you won’t let me blame you, I must blame my mother.” “Your mother!--I had always understood that she had paid particular attention to your early education, and all the world says that Lady Mary Vivian, though a woman of fashion, is remarkably well-informed and domestic; and, judging from those of her letters which you have shown me, I should think that, for once, what all the world says is right.” “What all the world says is right, and yet I am not wrong:--my mother is a very clever woman, and most affectionate, and she certainly paid particular attention to my early education; but her attention was too particular, her care was too great. You know I was an only son--then I lost my father when I was an infant; and a woman, let her be ever so sensible, cannot well educate an _only_ son, without some manly assistance; the fonder she is of the son the worse, even if her fondness is not foolish fondness--it makes her over-anxious--it makes her do too much. My mother took too much, a great deal too much, care of me; she over-educated, over-instructed, over-dosed me with premature lessons of prudence: she was so afraid that I should ever do a foolish thing, or not say a wise one, that she prompted my every word, and guided my every action. So I grew up, seeing with her eyes, hearing with her ears, and judging with her understanding, till, at length, it was found out that I had not eyes, ears, or understanding of my own. When I was between twelve and thirteen, my mother began to think that I was not sufficiently manly for my age, and that there was something too yielding and undecided in my character. Seized with a panic, my mother, to make a man of me at once, sent me to ---- school. There I was, with all convenient expedition, made ashamed of every thing good I had learned at home; and there I learned every thing bad, and nothing good, that could be learned at school. I was inferior in Latin and Greek; and this was a deficiency I could not make up without more labour than I had courage to undertake. I was superior in general literature, but this was of