I suppose his knowledge gave him a self-confidence
which made itself felt whether he intended it or not; at any rate,
he soon began to pose as a judge literature, and from this to being
a judge of art, architecture, music and everything else, the path
was easy. Like His father, he knew the value of money, but he was at
once more ostentatious and less liberal than his father; while yet a
boy he was a thorough little man of the world, and did well rather
upon principles which he had tested by personal experiment, and
recognised as principles, than from those profounder convictions which
in his father were so instinctive that he could give no account
concerning them.
His father, as I have said, wondered at him and let him alone. His
son had fairly distanced him, and in an inarticulate way the father
knew it perfectly well. After a few years he took to wearing his
best clothes whenever his son came to stay with him, nor would he
discard them for his ordinary ones till the young man had returned
to London. I believe old Mr. Pontifex, along with his pride and
affection, felt also a certain fear of his son, as though of something
which he could not thoroughly understand, and whose ways,
notwithstanding outward agreement, were nevertheless not as his
ways.
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