"Hegh, sir, now you ha' the bra' time before you, you maun e'en try and be as geud as he. And if life last, ye wull too; for there never waur a bad ane of that stock. Wi' heads kindly stup'd to the least, and lifted manfu' oop to the heighest,--that ye all war' sin ye came from the Ark. Blessin's on the ould name! though little pelf goes with it, it sounds on the peur man's ear like a bit of gould!" "Do you not see now," said Roland, as we turned away, "what we owe to a name, and what to our forefathers? Do you not see why the remotest ancestor has a right to our respect and consideration,--for he was a parent? 'Honor your parents': the law does not say, 'Honor your children!' If a child disgrace us, and the dead, and the sanctity of this great heritage of their virtues,--the name; if he does--" Roland stopped short, and added fervently, "But you are my heir now,--I have no fear! What matter one foolish old man's sorrows? The name, that property of generations, is saved, thank Heaven,--the name!" Now the riddle was solved, and I understood why, amidst all his natural grief for a son's loss, that proud father was consoled. For he was less himself a father than a son,--son to the long dead. From every grave where a progenitor slept, he had heard a parent's voice. He could bear to be bereaved, if the forefathers were not dishonored. Roland was more than half a Roman; the son might still cling to his household affections, but the Lares were a part of his religion. CHAPTER V. But I ought to be hard at work preparing myself for Cambridge. The deuce! how can I? The point in academical education on which I require most preparation is Greek composition. I come to my father, who, one might think, was at home enough in this. But rare indeed it is to find a great scholar who is a good teacher. My dear father, if one is content to take you in your own way, there never was a more admirable instructor for the heart, the head, the principles, or the taste,--when you have discovered that there is some one sore to be healed, one defect to be repaired; and you have rubbed your spectacles, and got your hand fairly into that recess between your frill and your waistcoat. But to go to you cut and dry, monotonously, regularly, book and exercise in hand; to see the mournful patience with which you tear yourself from that great volume of Cardan in the very honeymoon of possession; and then to note those mild eyebrows gradually distend themselves into perplexed diagonals over some false quantity or some barbarous collocation, till there steal forth that horrible Papce! which means more on your lips than I am sure it ever did when Latin was a live language, and Papce a natural and unpedantic ejaculation!--no, I would sooner blunder through the dark by myself a thousand times than light my rushlight at the lamp of that Phlegethonian Papce!