One could almost tell
upon one's fingers the happy families who could do anything,
and might have everything. A school-boy's ideas of the Church
then were fat-livings, and of the State, rotten-boroughs. To
do nothing and get something, formed a boy's ideal of a manly
career. There was nothing in the lot, little in the
temperament, of Charles Egremont, to make him an exception to
the multitude. Gaily and securely he floated on the brilliant
stream. Popular at school, idolized at home, the present had
no cares, and the future secured him a family seat in
Parliament the moment he entered life, and the inheritance of
a glittering post at court in due time, as its legitimate
consequence. Enjoyment, not ambition, seemed the principle of
his existence. The contingency of a mitre, the certainty of
rich preferment, would not reconcile him to the self-sacrifice
which, to a certain degree, was required from a priest, even
in those days of rampant Erastianism. He left the colonies as
the spoil of his younger brothers; his own ideas of a
profession being limited to a barrack in a London park, varied
by visits to Windsor. But there was time enough to think of
these things. He had to enjoy Oxford as he had enjoyed Eton.
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