That excellent man Izaak Walton's feelings about
fish were much akin to those of old Timothy Petrick, and of his
descendants in a lesser degree, concerning the landed aristocracy.
To torture and to love simultaneously is a proceeding strange to
reason, but possible to practice, as these instances show.
Hence, when Timothy's brother Edward said slightingly one day that
Timothy's son was well enough, but that he had nothing but shops and
offices in his backward perspective, while his own children, should
he have any, would be far different, in possessing such a mother as
the Honourable Harriet, Timothy felt a bound of triumph within him
at the power he possessed of contradicting that statement if he
chose.
So much was he interested in his boy in this new aspect that he now
began to read up chronicles of the illustrious house ennobled as the
Dukes of Southwesterland, from their very beginning in the glories
of the Restoration of the blessed Charles till the year of his own
time. He mentally noted their gifts from royalty, grants of lands,
purchases, intermarriages, plantings and buildings; more
particularly their political and military achievements, which had
been great, and their performances in art and letters, which had
been by no means contemptible. He studied prints of the portraits
of that family, and then, like a chemist watching a crystallization,
began to examine young Rupert's face for the unfolding of those
historic curves and shades that the painters Vandyke and Lely had
perpetuated on canvas.
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