Despite the sinister semi-predictions of the
ci-devant heir-at-law, the youthful Chillingly
passed with safety, and indeed with dignity, through
the infant stages of existence. He took his measles
and whooping-cough with philosophical equanimity.
He gradually acquired the use of speech, but he did
not too lavishly exercise that special attribute of
humanity. During the earlier years of childhood
he spoke as little as if he had been prematurely trained
in the school of Pythagoras. But he evidently
spoke the less in order to reflect the more.
He observed closely and pondered deeply over what
he observed. At the age of eight he began to
converse more freely, and it was in that year that
he startled his mother with the question, “Mamma,
are you not sometimes overpowered by the sense of
your own identity?”
Lady Chillingly,—I was about to say rushed,
but Lady Chillingly never rushed,—Lady
Chillingly glided less sedately than her wont to Sir
Peter, and repeating her son’s question, said,
“The boy is growing troublesome, too wise for
any woman: he must go to school.”
Sir Peter was of the same opinion. But where
on earth did the child get hold of so long a word
as “identity,” and how did so extraordinary
and puzzling a metaphysical question come into his
head? Sir Peter summoned Kenelm, and ascertained
that the boy, having free access to the library, had
fastened upon Locke on the Human Understanding, and
was prepared to dispute with that philosopher upon
the doctrine of innate ideas. Quoth Kenelm,
gravely, “A want is an idea; and if, as soon
as I was born, I felt the want of food and knew at
once where to turn for it, without being taught, surely
I came into the world with an ‘innate idea.’”
Sir Peter, though he dabbled in metaphysics, was posed,
and scratched his head without getting out a proper
answer as to the distinction between ideas and instincts.
“My child,” he said at last, “you
don’t know what you are talking about:
go and take a good gallop on your black pony; and
I forbid you to read any books that are not given to
you by myself or your mamma. Stick to ‘Puss
in Boots.’”
Sir Peter ordered his carriage and drove
to the house of the stout parson. That doughty
ecclesiastic held a family living a few miles distant
from the Hall, and was the only one of the cousins
with whom Sir Peter habitually communed on his domestic
affairs.
He found the Parson in his study, which exhibited
tastes other than clerical. Over the chimney-piece
were ranged fencing-foils, boxing-gloves, and staffs
for the athletic exercise of single-stick; cricket-bats
and fishing-rods filled up the angles. There
were sundry prints on the walls: one of Mr. Wordsworth,
flanked by two of distinguished race-horses; one of
a Leicestershire short-horn, with which the Parson,
who farmed his own glebe and bred cattle in its rich
pastures, had won a prize at the county show; and on
either side of that animal were the portraits of Hooker
and Jeremy Taylor. There were dwarf book-cases
containing miscellaneous works very handsomely bound;
at the open window, a stand of flower-pots, the flowers
in full bloom. The Parson’s flowers were
famous.
