Yet BULMER is firmly
convinced that I owe any modest success I may have attained and all my
annual income to his beneficent efforts on my behalf. And the worst
of it is, that he has a kind of top-heavy and overwhelming good-nature
about him. He honestly means to be kind and genial where he only
succeeds in irritating his perverse acquaintances. Was BULMER
always thus? When he began on his small salary, did he patronise
the office-boy? When he had learnt to spell, did he devote his first
epistolary efforts to the pompous patronage of his parents? I fancy
I can hear him declaring to his tottering father that a man so
blessed in his son might well console himself for many a grievous
disappointment, and the old man I am sure meekly accepted his son's
assurance, and joined with his wife in thanking providence for
granting them so great a happiness. But BULMER has different fashions
of showing his superiority. I will do him the credit of saying that I
do not believe him to be a Snob. He does not prostrate himself before
the great, since he believes himself to be greater than they can ever
be. But he knows that ordinary human nature is apt to be impressed
by the appearance of intimate familiarity with persons of title. And
BULMER therefore uses the Peers of his circle as instruments wherewith
he may belabour the minds of his humbler friends.
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