To give and take a black eye was not unusual nor derogatory in a gentleman; to drive a stage-coach the enjoyment, the emulation of generous youth.
Is there any young fellow of the present time who aspires to take the place of a stoker?
You see occasionally in Hyde Park one dismal old drag with a lonely driver.

Where are you, charioteers?
Where are you, O rattling Quicksilver, O swift Defiance?
You are passed by racers stronger and swifter than you.

Your lamps are out, and the music of your horns has died away.
Just at the ending of that old time, Lord Kew's life began.

That kindly middle-aged gentleman whom his county knows that good landlord, and friend of all his tenantry round about; that builder of churches, and indefatigable visitor of schools; that writer of letters to the farmers of his shire, so full of sense and benevolence; who wins prizes at agricultural shows, and even lectures at county town institutes in his modest, pleasant way, was the wild young Lord Kew of a quarter of a century back; who kept racehorses, patronised boxers, fought a duel, thrashed a Life Guardsman, gambled furiously at Crockford's, and did who knows what besides?
His mother, a devout lady, nursed her son and his property carefully during the young gentleman's minority: keeping him and his younger brother away from all mischief, under the eyes of the most careful pastors and masters.

She learnt Latin with the boys, she taught them to play on the piano: she enraged old Lady Kew, the children's grandmother, who prophesied that her daughter-in-law would make milksops of her sons, to whom the old lady was never reconciled until after my lord's entry at Christchurch, where he began to distinguish himself very soon after his first term.