An English Squire; A Novel Volume 2 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1884 edition. Excerpt: ...But in Alvar this motive seemed almost non existent. He did not care about his own duty or other people's. Only such a sense, or the strong influence of the religion from which in the main it sprang, or a sort of enthusiasm equally foreign to him, could have roused an indolent nature to the supreme effort of altering his whole way of living, of caring for subjects hitherto indifferent to him--in short, of changing his entire self. No doubt Alvar would think something due to his position, and something more to please Cheriton, but he would not regard shortcomings as of any consequence; in short, it was not that Alvar's principles were different from theirs, but that as motives of action he had not got any; not that he had Spanish instead of English notions of property, politics or religion, but that he did not care to entertain any notions at all. Cheriton understood enough now of the shifting scenes of Spanish life to understand that this might be their effect on an outsider who saw many different schemes of life all produce an equally bad effect on society; but it was none the less peculiarly illadapted to an owner of English property; and he took leave to think that if Spanish gentlemen in past generations had administered justice in their own neighbourhoods, mended their own roads, and seen to the instruction of their own tenants, a happier state of things might have prevailed at the present time in the peninsula. Anyhow, to him, as to his father, the welfare of Oakby was very dear--dearer now than ever, for his father's sake. One thought had troubled Mr. Lester's last hours, that by his own conduct he had allowed Alvar to become unfit to succeed him: all, therefore, that Cheriton could do to remove that...