The lad is the only child, by his wife, Lady Temple, of Mr. Temple, a name famous in the superior Law Courts of England, a gentleman of wealth, distinction, and high position in the land. From his birth, Arthur Temple has been the object of the most anxious and devoted care of his parents--the devotion mainly springing from the mother's breast, the anxiety from the father's. Not that the father was wanting in love. On the contrary. As much love as it was in his nature to bestow, he bestowed upon his son. But it was not like the mother's love, purely unselfish; it was alloyed with personal ambition, and was consequently of a coarser grain. From a delicate babe, Arthur Temple grew into a delicate boy--so delicate that his life often hung upon a thread, as ordinary people express it, and he was not sent to a public school for his education. The best private tutors were obtained for him, and the lad showed an eager desire to acquire what they were engaged to teach. But his mental vigour ran ahead of his physical power, and the physicians ordered that his studies should be discontinued. "His brain is too wakeful," they said, "his nerves too sensitive. The difficulty will be not to make him study, but to keep him from it." So it turned out. Free from the trammels of enforced study, and left to follow his own inclination, the lad flew to the books most congenial to his nature, and learnt from them what he most desired to learn. The intellectual power apparent in the lad delighted his father as much as his lack of physical strength distressed him. Mr. Temple's ambition was various. Wealth he loved for the sake of the luxury and ease it conferred; power he coveted, and coveted the more as he rose, for its own sake, and because it placed him above his fellows, and gave him control over them; but beyond all, his chief ambition was to found a family, which should be famous in the land. To the accomplishment of this end two things were necessary: the first, that he himself should become famous, and should amass much wealth; the second, that his son--his only child--should marry, and have children. In the first, he was successful. It is not necessary to inquire by what means--whether by superior talent, by tact, by industry, or by force of patronage--he rose to power, and passed men in the race who at least were equal with himself. The fact is sufficient; he rose above them, and it was acknowledged that the highest prize in his profession might one day be his.