Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 1.djvu/346

Viponts had for long generations been an energetic race. Whatever their defects, they had exhibited shrewdness and vigour. The late Marquess (grandfather to the present) had been perhaps the ablest (that is, done most for the House of Vipont) of them all. Of a grandiose and superb mode of living; of a majestic deportment; of princely manners; of a remarkable talent for the management of all business, whether private or public; a perfect enthusiast for the House of Vipont, and aided by a marchioness in all respects worthy of him,—he might be said to be the culminating flower of the venerable stem. But the present lord, succeeding to the title as a mere child, was a melancholy contrast, not only to his grandsire, but to the general character of his progenitors. Before his time, every Head of the House had done something for it; even the most frivolous had contributed one had collected the pictures, another the statues, a third the medals, a fourth had amassed the famous Vipont library; while others had at least married heiresses, or augmented, through ducal lines, the splendour of the interminable cousinhood. The present Marquess was literally nil. The pith of the Viponts was not in him. He looked well; he dressed well: if life were only the dumb show of a tableau, he would have been a paragon of a Marquess. But he was like the watches we give to little children, with a pretty gilt dial-plate, and no works in them. He was thoroughly inert; there was no winding him up: he could not manage his property; he could not answer his letters,—very few of them could he even read through. Politics did not interest him, nor literature, nor field-sports. He shot, it is true, but mechanically; wondering, perhaps, why he did shoot. He attended races, because the House of Vipont kept a racing stud. He bet on his own horses, but if they lost showed no vexation. Admirers (no Marquess of Montfort could be wholly without them) said, "What fine temper! what good breeding!" it was nothing but constitutional apathy. No one could call him a bad man: he was not a profligate, an oppressor, a miser, a spendthrift; he would not have taken the trouble to be a bad man on any account. Those who beheld his character at a distance would have called him an exemplary man. The more conspicuous duties of his station—subscriptions, charities, the maintenance of grand establishments, the encouragement of the fine arts—were virtues admirably performed for him by others. But the phlegm or nullity of his being was not, after all, so complete as I have made it, perhaps, appear. He had