OR THE DESERT ISLAND. 33

the mind, and sweeten and tranquillize the most irritable
of the ill-humoured.

Unhappily, Count Charles was far from being ina dispo-
sition favourable to such salutary reflections. He had re-
ceived, what the world calls, an accomplished education;
from his tenderest infancy, the principles of Christianity
had been familiar to him : but his mother, who would have
deemed no sacrifice too great to insure his faithful adhe- -
rence to his religious duties, and to render him conspicuous
for his virtues, was without that energy of character ne-
cessary to enable her to restrain the impetuosity of his
temper, and counteract the stubbornness, the caprices and
the resolute self-will of her fondly cherished son. Thus,
that habitual haughtiness, and extreme irritability of dis-
position, for which the young Count was by some detested,
and by the many despised, were the legitimate fruit of the
foolish tenderness of his mother, and the pernicious indul-
gences he had continually extorted from the blindness of
her love.

Even in the family circle, Charles spurned the least sha-
dow of restraint: not a day passed without witnessing
some domestic quarrel, some household disturbance, of
which he was the prime author. Yet he undoubtedly pos-