All this, surely, was intrinsically right, wrong only in its direction.
Had he been sent to Woolwich, he might have come out, if not a rival of
the Duke of Richmond, then master of the ordnance, at least a first-rate
engineer. In economical arts and improvements, nothing less than
national, he might have been the Duke of Bridgewater of Ireland. Had the
sea been his profession, Lord Mulgrave might have been less alone in the
rare union of science and enterprise.
But all this capability of usefulness and fair fame, was brought to
nought by the obstinate absurdity of the people about him; nothing could
wean them from Westminster. His grandfather Roan, or Rohan, an old man
who saved much money in Rathbone-place, and spent but little of it
every evening at Slaughter's coffee-house, holding out large promise to
property, so became absolute; and absolute nonsense was his conduct to
his grandson. He persevered in the school; where, if a boy disaffects
book-knowledge, his books are only bought and sold. And after
Westminster, when the old man died, as if solicitous that every thing
about his grave, but poppy and mandragora, should grow downwards,
his will declared his grandson the heir, but not to inherit till he
graduated at Cambridge.
To Cambridge therefore he went; where having pursued his studies, as it
is called, in a ratio inverse and descending, he might have gone on from
bad to worse; and so, as many do, putting a grave face upon it, he might
have had his degree.
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