CHAPTER VI.
While yet a child, and long before his time, He had perceived the presence and the power Of greatness.
.....
But eagerly he read, and read again.
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Yet still uppermost Nature was at his heart, as if he felt, Though yet he knew not how, a wasting power In all things that from her sweet influence Might seek to wean him.

Therefore with her hues, Her forms, and with the spirit of her forms, He clothed the nakedness of austere truth.
WORDSWORTH.
Algernon Mordaunt was the last son of an old and honourable race, which had centuries back numbered princes in its line.

His parents had had many children, but all (save Algernon, the youngest) died in their infancy.

His mother perished in giving him birth.

Constitutional infirmity and the care of mercenary nurses contributed to render Algernon a weakly and delicate child: hence came a taste for loneliness and a passion for study; and from these sprung, on the one hand, the fastidiousness and reserve which render us apparently unamiable, and, on the other, the loftiness of spirit and the kindness of heart which are the best and earliest gifts of literature, and more than counterbalance our deficiencies in the "minor morals" due to society by their tendency to increase our attention to the greater ones belonging to mankind.