Grace Aguilar - Home Influence - A Tale for Mothers and Daughters

To Edward all was strange. While the graces of his body and mind had been most sedulously cultivated, he had never been taught even the public ordinances of religion, much less its inward spirit. His mother had often and often felt a pang of reproach, at thus neglecting that which an inward voice would whisper was most essential; but she was wont to silence the pang by the determined idea, that she was neither worthy nor able to give him such solemn lessons, and that it would come by instinct to him in after years. There was time enough for him to think of such things. He had been now and then to church, but it was a mere form, regarded as a weary duty, from which he escaped whenever he could. The present scene, then, completely bewildered him. He had always fancied himself superior to any of the boys he had associated with; but as he looked at and listened to Herbert, who seemed at most only two years older than himself, he became sensible of a very strange and disagreeable, but a very decided feeling of inferiority: and then, too, it was so incomprehensible the servants all joining them, a class of people whom in India he had been taught so to consider his inferiors, that even to speak with them was a species of degradation; and he was destined to be still more surprised, for before they left the library, he heard his aunt and uncle address them all, and say a few kind words, and make inquiries after their families to each.

To Ellen that evening service recalled some of Mr. Myrvin's instructions, and seemed to help her to realize those new thoughts and feelings, which she had learned, for the first time, in Wales. Her father had, indeed, the last year of his life tried to give her some ideas of religion; but having only so very lately begun to think seriously himself, he felt diffident and uncertain of his own powers, and so left an impression more of awe toward the subject than of love, which to a disposition such as Ellen's was unfortunate.

A very short time sufficed for Percy and Emmeline to introduce their cousins to all the delights and mysteries of their dear old home: and Oakwood Hall was really a place for imagination to revel in. It was a large castelated mansion, fraught with both the associations of the past, and the comforts of the present. The injuries which the original mansion had received during the civil war of Charles I., had, when the family returned at the Restoration, caused much of the old house to be pulled down, and replaced with larger rooms, and greater conveniences for a modern dwelling-house, retaining, however, quite sufficient of the past to throw interest around it.

The wings were still flanked with turrets, which were Percy's and Emmeline's delight; and the many stair-cases, leading into all sorts of nooks and corners – and the small and most uncomfortable rooms, because some of them happened to be hung with tapestry, and had those small narrow windows sunk in deep recesses – were pronounced by both far more enjoyable than the beautiful suite of rooms forming the center of the mansion, and the dwelling of the family. These were only saved from being disagreeably modern – Percy would declare – by their beautiful richly-polished oaken panels, and by the recesses which the large windows still formed, making almost a room by themselves. The hall, too, with its superb sweep of staircase and broad carved oaken balustrade, leading to a gallery above, which opened on the several sleeping apartments, and thus permitting the full height of the mansion, from base to roof, to be visible from the hall. Tho doors visible in the gallery opened mostly on dressing-rooms, or private sitting-rooms, which led to the large, airy sleeping-rooms, to which the servants had access by back stair-cases leading from their hall; and so leaving the oaken staircase and gallery entirely to the use of the family, and of many a game of noisy play had that gallery been the scene. There had been a beautiful little chapel adjoining the mansion, but it was mercilessly burned to the ground by the infatuated Puritans, and never restored; the venerable old church of the village henceforth serving the family of the hall.

Situated on the banks of the Dart, whose serpentine windings gave it the appearance of a succession of most lovely lakes, Nature had been so lavish of her beauties in the garden and park, especially in the magnificent growth of the superb oaks, from which the estate took its name, that it was not much wonder Mrs. Hamilton, always an intense lover of nature, should have become so attached to her home, as never to feel the least inclination to leave it. She did not wish her girls to visit London till a few months before Caroline was old enough to be introduced, to give them then finishing masters; and to that time she of course always looked, as demanding from her part of the year to be spent in town. The career of Eleanor, the recollections of the frivolity and error into which her own early youth had been thrown, had given her not only a distaste, but an actual dread of London for her girls, till such principles and associations had been instilled which would enable them to pass through the ordeal of successive seasons without any change of character or feeling. Her sons, since their tenth year, had more than once accompanied their father to the metropolis; but though these visits were always sources of enjoyment, especially to Percy, they never failed to return with unabated affection to their home, and to declare there was no place in England like it.

Mr. Hamilton, though in neither profession nor business, was far from being an idle man. His own estate was sufficiently large, and contained a sufficient number of dependents, for whose mortal and immortal welfare he was responsible, to give him much employment; and in addition to this, the home interests and various aspects of his country were so strongly entwined with his very being – that, though always refusing to enter Parliament, he was the prompter and encourager of many a political movement, having for its object amelioration of the poor, and improvement of the whole social system; closely connected with which, as he was, they gave him neither public fame nor private emolument. He acted in all things from the same single-hearted integrity and high honor which caused him to refuse the title proffered to his father. Her husband's connection with many celebrated characters, and her own correspondence, and occasional visits from her friends to Oakwood, prevented Mrs. Hamilton's interest from too complete concentration in her home, as, in her first retirement, many feared. She had, too, some friends near her, whose society gave her both pleasure and interest; and many acquaintances who would have visited more than she felt any inclination for, had she not had the happy power of quietly pursuing her own path, and yet conciliating all.

The Rev. William Howard had accepted Mr. Hamilton's eagerly-proffered invitation to become his rector, and undertake the education of his boys, from very peculiar circumstances. He had been minister of a favorite church in one of the southern towns, and master of an establishment for youths of high rank, in both which capacities he had given universal satisfaction. The reprehensible conduct of some of his pupils, carried on at first so secretly as to elude his knowledge, at length became so notorious as to demand examination. He had at first refused all credence, but when proved, by the confused replies of all, and half confession of some, he briefly and emphatically laid before them the enormity of their conduct, and declared that, as confidence was entirely broken between them, he would resign the honor of their education, refusing to admit them any longer as members of his establishment. In vain the young men implored him to spare them the disgrace of such an expulsion; he was inexorable.

This conduct, in itself so upright, was painted by the smarting offenders in such colors, that Mr. Howard gradually but surely found his school abandoned, and himself so misrepresented, that a spirit less self-possessed and secure in its own integrity must have sunk beneath it. But he had some true friends, and none more active and earnest than Mr. Hamilton. A very brief residence at Oakwood Rectory removed even the recollection of the injustice he had experienced; and he himself, as pastor and friend, proved a treasure to high and low. Ten other youths, sons of the neighboring gentry, became his pupils, their fathers gladly following in Mr. Hamilton's lead.