STERLING. CHAPTER I. BIRTH, PARENTAGE, AND EDUCATION, OF "Go, hang yourselves, all! You are idle, shallow things. I am not of your element. You shall know more hereafter."-SHAKSPEARE's Twelfth Night. "THE people here are really very civil!" said Caroline, as her brother returned from the Chelmsford races; "we have had near a dozen visitors since you left us, and an intimation of almost as many more." "Wonderful!" exclaimed Robert Sterling. "What in the world can they see in our appearance, to bestow so much of their tediousness upon us ?" "O, it's all owing to our good father's character. But really, Robert, you take all this as if you were not obliged, or at least not pleased, by such marks of respect." say "Sir Robert, no doubt, ought-nay, I dare he will be much flattered,” replied Robert, junior, "by such a host of natives, thronging down like savages to the beach, upon the arrival of a ship on a voyage of discovery. But pray, who are these civil people ?" "Oh, there is Mr. Williamson, the great merchant, who they say is worth a million, and lives half the year (at least his family does) in the great house upon the hill-" "While he plods the other half," interrupted Robert, "between his dwelling-house in Bloomsbury Square (the first perch from the City) and his house of business in Mincing Lane; but of a truth, all very respectable, and not to be sneezed at.” "You are very provoking," said Caroline, "and I won't tell you any more of our goodnatured neighbours." "Yet I should like to know, if only par curiosité," returned Robert; "for I have no doubt my little sister will display her usual candour and discrimination in all that she will have to say of them." "And you, my difficult brother, will of course receive it with your usual fastidiousness, because, perhaps, there are no very great people among them; though, now I recollect, there is one: and every body says that old Lady Mountain is an excellent creature, and does a great deal of good; and her son, Sir James——” "Endeavours to ape his betters in St. James's Street, and is a miserable failure," remarked her brother. "I have done," said Caroline, beginning to be annoyed; "yet there is one other, if that will be any recommendation-Sir Capel Hopkinswho married Lady Juliana Sallowfield-who must please you, for she was an Earl's daughter you know—” "And as sallow as her name,” replied Robert. "She was a despairing old maid, living upon her relations, or she never would have thought of him; for though a skeleton in her person as well as her purse, she was one of the stiffest of exclusives; and I think he was the son of a stock-broker, who named him Capel after Capel Court, the Stock Exchange; upon the strength of which, he sets up for a connexion of the Essex family." "My dear brother, I wish you would teach me-" "To distinguish Bristol stones from diamonds," said Sterling. "But you were made, my dear sister, for what you are: a plain, excellent, pretty, and kind-hearted creature; delightful at home, but wholly ignorant of real life abroad." "I give up in despair," said Caroline, "and must leave you to cater acquaintance for yourself." "Not in this second-hand pretending town," replied Robert, "that affects to call itself a watering-place, upon the strength of being a post-office station. No! if you will seek waters and bathing for health, quaff, I beseech you, a politer air than the fat Essex,-Bath, or Weymouth, or Harrowgate, where there may be some chance of meeting people distinguished for something more than mere riches, though of their own acquiring." "And pray what are we ourselves, Robert ?" asked the sensible girl, though timidly. For she loved and esteemed her brother, and did not like to hurt him, by wounding that fastidiousness which was his foible. "Aye, there's the rub!" replied Robert; and he left her, as was his wont when very thoughtful, to wander along the shore by himself. Robert Sterling (for we must now describe him a little) was the son of a most respectable, because a sensible, and very honest person, whose only fault in Robert's mind was, that he was a citizen of London. He had made, indeed, what might be called a fair fortune there; and to this Robert had no objection, other than the place where it was made. And yet the disposition which caused this distaste was rather unaccountable. He had been born in St. Swithin's Lane, and in his infant years saw nobody but inmates of the neighbourhood of Lombard Street and Cornhill. When a child, it was a treat to young Robert to be allowed to walk with his father to the Royal Exchange, where he saw him much respected, and heard him converse with merchants of the same rank and respectability, whose habits, ideas, and language, seemed always on a level with his own. Nobility, titles, fashion, were never once mentioned; nor did there seem to him a finer place of residence than Broad Street, or a more airy situation than Tower Hill. |