Nor would my fortune justify
such an expenditure. I was well enough off to be a comfortable and
free housekeeper, and as independent as a king on my own farm; living
in abundance, nay, in superfluity, so far as all the ordinary wants
were concerned; but men hesitated a little about setting up for
gentlemen at large, in the year 1797. The country was fast getting
rich, it is true, under the advantages of its neutral position; but it
had not yet been long enough emancipated from its embarrassments to
think of playing the nabob on eight hundred pounds currency
a-year. The interview terminated with a strong exhortation from my
guardian not to think of abandoning my books for any project as
visionary and useless as the hope of seeing the world in the character
of a common sailor.
I related all this to Rupert, who, I now perceived for the first time,
did not hesitate to laugh at some of his father's notions, as
puritanical and exaggerated. He maintained that every one was the best
judge of what he liked, and that the sea had produced quite as fair a
proportion of saints as the land. He was not certain, considering the
great difference there was in numbers, that more good men might not be
traced in connection with the ocean, than in connection with any other
pursuit.
"Take the lawyers now, for instance, Miles," he said, "and what can
you make out of them, in the way of religion, I should like to know?
They hire their consciences out at so much _per diem_, and talk
and reason just as zealously for the wrong, as they do for the right.
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