My father was possessed with the greatness of his ancestry, and resented the new-fangled notions that professed to see nothing in blood or history. Nurtured on tradition of a past that would never reappear, he speedily retired from a world where he was too eager to see that a Herbert was no more than a Jones or a Smith, and, though gifted with powers that, rightly used, might have proved, even in these days, that there was more in his race than tradition of a faded past, he preferred withdrawing into that past to reproducing it in a manner accommodated to the new order of things. In all other respects he was a very amiable English gentleman, who, abjuring politics, which he held had degenerated into a trade unbecoming a gentleman’s following, divided his time between antiquarian and agricultural pursuits, for neither of which did I exhibit so ardent an admiration as he had hoped. As soon as I could read, and think, and reason in my own way, I ran counter to my father in many things, and was pronounced by him to be a radical, infected with the dangerous doctrines of the day, which threatened the overthrow of all things good, and the advent of all things evil. He only read in history the records of a few great families. For me the families were of far less interest than the peoples, historically at least. The families had already passed or were passing away; the peoples always remained. To the families I attributed most of the evils that had afflicted humanity; in the peoples I found the stuff that from time to time helped to regenerate humanity. I do not say that all this came to me at once; but this manner of looking at things grew upon me, and made my father anxious about my future, though he was too kind to place any great restrictions in the way of my pursuits, and our disputes would generally end by the injunction: “Roger, whatever you do or think, always remember that you represent a noble race, and are by your very birth an English gentleman, so long as such a being is permitted to exist.”