F. W. Farrar
Julian Home
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664583680
Table of Contents
Chapter Two.
Julian Home.
“O thou goddess,
Thou divine Nature, how thyself thou blazon’st
In these two princely boys; they are as gentle
As zephyrs blowing beneath the violet,
Not wagging his sweet head; and yet as fierce,
Their royal blood enchafed, as the rud’st wind
That by the top doth take the mountain pine,
And makes him bow to the vale.”
Cymbeline, Act 4, scene 2.
It was but recently, (as will be explained hereafter), that the circumstances had arisen which had rendered it necessary for Julian Home to enter Saint Werner’s as a sizar and since that necessity had arisen, he had been far from happy. A peculiar sensitiveness had been from childhood the distinctive feature of his character. It rendered him doubly amenable to every emotion of pleasure and pain, and gave birth to a self-conscious spirit, which made his nature appear weaker, when a boy, than it really was. While he was at Harton, this self-consciousness made him keenly, almost tremblingly, alive to the opinions of others about himself. His self-depreciation arose from real humility, and there was in his heart so deep a fountain of love towards all his fellows, and so sympathising an admiration of all their good or brilliant qualities, that he was far too apt to suffer himself to be tormented by the indifference or dislike of those who were far his inferiors.
It was strange that such a boy should have had enemies, but he was sadly aware that in that light some regarded him. Had it been possible to conciliate them without any compromise in his line of action, he would have done so at any cost; but as their enmity arose from that vehement moral indignation which Julian both felt and expressed against the iniquities which he despised and disapproved, he knew that all union with them was out of his power. As a general rule, the best boys are by no means the most popular.
It was the great delight of Julian’s detractors to compare him unfavourably with their hero, Bruce. Bruce, as a fair scholar and a good cricketer, with no very marked line of his own—as a fine-looking fellow, anxious to keep on good terms with everybody, and with an apparently hearty “well met” for all the world—cut against the grain of no one’s predilections, and had the voice of popular favour always on his side. While ambition made him work tolerably hard, as far as he could do so without attracting observation, the line he took was to disparage industry, and ally himself with the merely cricketing set, with some of whom he might be seen strolling arm-in-arm, in loud conversation, at every possible opportunity. Julian, on the other hand, though a fair cricketer, soon grew weary of the “shop” about that game, which for three months formed the main staple of conversation among the boys; and while his countenance was too expressive to conceal this fact, he in his turn found himself unable to enlist more than a few in any interest for those