Meanwhile, their family grew up around them, and every thing prospered--for a blessing went along with them: they were adored by their dependents; honoured even by those who hated them for their superiority; and with the occasional visit of a relative or friend their time flowed on, fruitful in its course, and fraught with real and substantial happiness. But in this their retirement they were not forgotten. It is not those who are fluttering about their empty shewy existence in the sunshine of pleasure and splendour whose memories live longest, even in that very world they so busily court. All great and useful works are the fruit of retirement; all strength of character is formed, not in indulgence and prosperity, but in retreat, and under the grave hand of that schoolmaster Adversity. The corn is not ripened till it receives the first and the latter rain: neither is the moral character formed to its great end, till it has known the storms of adversity. The Delameres had now reaped the fruits of this earthly probation, and they shone forth with lustre, which could not be eclipsed by any tinsel splendour of mere outward grandeur. The children of such parents could not be supposed to be altogether different from themselves, for though there are anomalies in nature, it rarely happens that the offspring are not like either father or mother, still less that they are not ultimately influenced by the example of parents. When Lord Albert D'Esterre found himself in this happy society, so different, and yet, as he acknowledged to himself in every passing moment, so superior to that in which he had lately lived, he felt as if he also were of another race of beings; a pleased sort of self-satisfaction took possession of him: so much are we affected by outward things, so much does the mind reflect the hues by which it is surrounded. Are these, he thought, the persons whose names I have been accustomed to hear coupled with ridicule or condemnation--are these the persons who are designated vulgar? Strange indeed is the misnomer! And that there were many in the same grade, whose characters shed lustre upon their high stations, many who constituted the true character of British nobles, was a truth that Lord Albert had not sufficiently considered; for where is there a body in any country more worthy of respect and admiration than the real nobility of our land? It is only to be lamented that the errors of the few, and the assumed superiority of the _ton_, should have given ground for a false estimate of those characters of solid worth, whose virtues and whose ancient ancestry reflect a mutual value on each other; and the moral tranquillity of whose lives is at once a dignified refutation of the depreciation of high birth, and the best confirmation of its real consequence. But the middling classes, those who envy their superiors, or those who would attain to a distinction in society to which they have no immediate claim, are too apt in these days