CHAPTER V.

The mansion's self was vast and venerable,
With more of the monastic than has been
Elsewhere preserved; the cloisters still were stable,
The cells, too, and refectory, I ween:
An exquisite small chapel had been able,

Still unimpair'd, to decorate the scene;

The rest had been reformed, replaced, or sunk,

And spoke more of the Baron than the monk.-Byron.

OF the first few years of Sir John Fairland's residence at Hartland Abbey, we shall but notice one circumstance which occurred soon after his removal thither; it was, that his wife recommended to his notice and introduced into the family a young man, a distant relation of her own, whom she called cousin Richard, in the capacity of chief steward and secretary to Sir John.

Mr. Richard Graves was expert in business, shrewd, quick, and observing; indeed, insinuating in his manners, wherever it became worth his while to

please. He deemed himself philosophical; and as Lords Hervey, Bolingbroke, Chesterfield, and other men of talent and eminence in their day, avowed themselves free-thinkers, it became rather fashionable with the pretenders to abstract science and other coxcombs of the time to profess themselves freethinkers also; and if, like Mr. Richard Graves, they happened to be rogues to boot, it was very convenient thus to shake off the shackles of moral and religious obligation. Graves, supported by the paramount influence of Lady Fairland, soon gained a complete hold over the mind and affairs of Sir John, and somehow contrived in so many instances to confuse the one and complicate the other that he showed as much dexterity in such achievements as if he had been in the full practice of a pettifogging attorney. He had indeed been trained in the office of one with excellent skill; his removal from the desk of this exemplary master to the service of Sir John was occasioned by the latter offering a more tempting prospect to his future and long-sighted calculations. He had, therefore, eagerly availed himself of his

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present position, and entered upon its profits (which he called duties) as soon as they were chalked out for him by his obliging cousin, the baronet's lady.

Charles Fairland, the eldest son of the first marriage, had now attained his twentieth year; and though knowing that the power of his father over his own estates, and those which he held in right of his former wife, was such that he could at any time cut him off and his sisters also from all inheritance, and give the whole to his second family, yet could Charles never prevail with himself-for he was naturally of a high spirit to treat his stepmother with other than distant and haughty respect. He longed for independence, and had often entreated his father to bring him up to some profession-the church, the bar, the army, anything-rather than make him a gentleman at large, with no certainty of any provision hereafter. But hitherto, in reply to all these most urgent and rational entreaties, he had obtained nothing more from his father than vague and indecisive answers. One step, however, all the children of the first marriage had gained-they were suffered

to live, though very unhappily, under the same roof with their father at the Abbey.

One day Sir John was sitting in his own private apartment, called the Abbot's Chamber, when he was surprised by the sudden entrance of his son Charles, who came before him equipped for a journey. At all times there was little cordiality between the father and the son. The former had been strongly prejudiced against his presumptive heir by the arts of the woman who was his second wife; and the latter, who looked upon her as the cause of his own mother dying of a broken heart, and of the long suffering, the cruel neglect experienced by his sisters and himself in their childhood, did not feel that reverential respect which it is to be wished every son should entertain towards a father.

Hence had arisen great dissensions and much misery between them. Domestic quarrels are always the bitterest; and if very near relatives do not love each other, they seldom stop at indifference; hatred too often springs up from the ground that has been fertilised and sown by self-interest, jealousy, and

deceit on the one hand, and by injured rights and irritated passions on the other. The estrangement which of late had kept father and son aloof from each other arose to such a degree that they now seldom met, although dwelling under the same roof; and when they did so, it was only to exchange angry words or complaining and reproachful expres

sions.

Sir John was, therefore, the more surprised to see his son Charles enter his apartment in a manner so unceremonious, and all at once address him with a bold, determined, and excited air, 'Sir, as a son, as your eldest son, however deeply I may feel I have been injured, I do not think it right to leave your house for ever without acquainting you with my purpose, and seeking from you some assistance to further me in the enterprise I have now in view. And, if it may be so, I would receive from you a father's blessing, should so much of natural feeling still exist in your heart towards me as to allow you to give it.'

The voice of Charles Fairland faltered as he spoke