How long would it be before Silverbridge would
write an article, or Gerald sign his name in the service of the
public?
And then those proposed marriages,--as to which he was beginning to
know that his children would be too strong for him! Anxious as he
was that both his sons should be permeated by liberal politics,
studious as he had ever been to teach them that the highest duty
of those high in rank was to use their authority to elevate those
beneath them, still he was hardly less anxious to make them
understand that their second duty required them to maintain their
own position. It was by feeling this, second duty,--by feeling it
and performing it,--that they would be enabled to perform the first.
And now both Silverbridge and his girl were bent upon marriages by
which they would depart out of their own order! Let Silverbridge
marry whom he might, he could not be other than the heir to the
honours of the family. But by his marriage he might either support
or derogate from these honours. And now, having at first made a
choice that was good, he had altered his mind from simple freak,
captivated by a pair of bright eyes and an arch smile, and without
a feeling in regard to his family, was anxious to take to his
bosom the granddaughter of an American day-labourer!
And then his girl,--of whose beauty he was so proud, from whose
manners, and tastes, and modes of life he had expected to reap
those good things, in a feminine degree, which his sons as young
men seemed so little fitted to give him! By slow degrees he had
been brought round to acknowledge that the young man was worthy.
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