Yet his home was not a very happy one; the kindlier things of domestic life had not gathered green around him. His father was varying and uneven in temper, especially toward his second son; sometimes stern and gloomy, sometimes irascible almost to a degree of insanity. Generous, brave, and upright, he was; but every one said, that a wound he had received on the head in the wars, had marvelously increased the infirmities of his temper. The mother, indeed, was full of tenderness and gentleness; and doubtless it was through her veins that the milk of human kindness had found its way into that strange boy's heart. But yet she loved her eldest son best, and unfortunately showed it. The brother was a wild, rash, reckless young man, some three years older; fond of the other, yet often pleased to irritate--or at least to try, for he seldom succeeded. He was the favorite, however, somewhat spoiled, much indulged; and whatever was done, was done for him. He was the person most considered in the house; his were the parties of pleasure: his the advantages. Even now the family was absent, in order to let him see the capital of his native land, to open his mind to the general world, to show him life on a more extended scale than could be done in the country; and his younger brother was left at home, to pursue his studies in dull solitude. Yet he did not complain; there was not even a murmur at his heart. He thought it all quite right. His destiny was before him. He was to form his fortune for himself, by his own abilities, his own learning, his own exertions. It was needful he should study, and his greatest ambition for the time was to enter with distinction at the University; his brightest thoughts of pleasure, the comparative freedom and independence of a collegiate life. Not that he did not find it dull; that gloomy old house, inhabited by none but himself and few servants. Sometimes it seemed to oppress him with a sense of terrible loneliness; sometimes it drove him to think of the strange difference of human destinies, and why it should be that--because it had pleased Heaven one man should be born a little sooner or a little later than another, or in some other place--such a wide interval should be placed between the different degrees of happiness and fortune. He felt, however, that such speculations were not good; they led him beyond his depth; he involved himself in subtilties more common in those days than in ours; he lost his way; and with passionate eagerness flew to his books, to drive the mists and shadows from his mind. Such had been the case even now: and there he sat, unconscious that a complete and total change was coming over his destiny.