impulse, and seemed to set at defiance even the course of time
to engraft on his nature any quality of prudence. The tone of
Eton during the days of Charles Egremont was not of the high
character which at present distinguishes that community. It
was the unforeseen eve of the great change, that, whatever was
its purpose or have been its immediate results, at least gave
the first shock to the pseudo-aristocracy of this country.
Then all was blooming; sunshine and odour; not a breeze
disturbing the meridian splendour. Then the world was not
only made for a few, but a very few. One could almost tell
upon one's fingers the happy families who could do anything,
and might have everything. A school-boy's ideas of the Church
then were fat-livings, and of the State, rotten-boroughs. To
do nothing and get something, formed a boy's ideal of a manly
career. There was nothing in the lot, little in the
temperament, of Charles Egremont, to make him an exception to
the multitude. Gaily and securely he floated on the brilliant
stream. Popular at school, idolized at home, the present had
no cares, and the future secured him a family seat in
Parliament the moment he entered life, and the inheritance of
a glittering post at court in due time, as its legitimate
consequence. Enjoyment, not ambition, seemed the principle of
his existence. The contingency of a mitre, the certainty of
rich preferment, would not reconcile him to the self-sacrifice
which, to a certain degree, was required from a priest, even
in those days of rampant Erastianism. He left the colonies as
the spoil of his younger brothers; his own ideas of a
profession being limited to a barrack in a London park, varied
by visits to Windsor. But there was time enough to think of
these things. He had to enjoy Oxford as he had enjoyed Eton.