A thousand pictures of the good he would
perform had crossed his brain, and it was only as he advanced in life,
and came to have a near view of the wiles which beset the
best-intentioned, that he could bring himself to believe most of that
which he meditated was impracticable. As it was, he entered into the
council with doubts and misgivings. Had he lived in a later age, under
his own system modified by the knowledge which has been a consequence of
the art of printing, it is probable that the Signor Soranzo would have
been a noble in opposition, now supporting with ardor some measure of
public benevolence, and now yielding gracefully to the suggestions of a
sterner policy, and always influenced by the positive advantages he was
born to possess, though scarcely conscious himself he was not all he
professed to be. The fault, however, was not so much that of the
patrician as that of circumstances, which, by placing interest in
opposition to duty, lures many a benevolent mind into still greater
weaknesses.
The companions of the Signor Soranzo, however, had a more difficult
task to prepare him for the duties of the statesman, which were so very
different from those he was accustomed to perform as a man, than they
had anticipated. They were like two trained elephants of the east,
possessing themselves all the finer instincts and generous qualities of
the noble animal, but disciplined by a force quite foreign to their
natural condition into creatures of mere convention, placed one on each
side of a younger brother, fresh from the plains, and whom it was their
duty to teach new services for the trunk, new affections, and haply the
manner in which to carry with dignity the howdah of a Rajah.
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