ABSTRACT
While I was at Beaulieu, I renewed my acquaintance with the noble family of Montagu, whose members have been commemorated in the early part of my narrative. The boys were now, each of them, five years older than at the time of my first visit, and were consequently more interesting, their manners more formed, and their sentiments better entitled to attention and deference. Edward was now fifteen, and Ralph two years younger. But the sobriety and sedateness of the character of Ralph, raised him nearly to an equality in point of judgment, with his more volatile / brother. At another time I should have been apt enough, like the generality of youths whose cheeks are beginning to be clad with the first down of manhood, to disdain companions who were still of a school-boy age. But my present state of precarious convalescence made me somewhat more humble. Henrietta, and the matron under whose guardianship she was placed, earnestly recommended to me, to unbend from the severity to which my constitution was inclined, and to mix in the lighter pursuits and amusements of persons younger than myself. The progeny of Lord Montagu, both male and female, made a groupe, that might almost have tempted a winged messenger of heaven, if he had passed that way, to suspend his flight, and to fix on this place as a scene of short repose, ‘though bent on speed . a Henrietta, as I have before said, was the favourite visitor of this circle; and the daughters of the house of Montagu observed / her superiority without one repining thought. For myself, my character and temperament was different from them all. I could not divest myself of my reserve, the unsociableness of my habits, and the perpetual activity and fermentation of my solitary thoughts. But I was willing to become their pupil. I was like one performing his noviciate in this school of juvenile philosophers. While I looked on, it seemed as if the infirmity of my mind, however twisted up with and inseparable from its original elements, quitted me. And I have sometimes been surprised to find it happen to me, that for a moment I also grew frolicsome, sportive and fantastical, by the charm of the irresistible contagion.
