useful to his father, steady and quiet, and not living merely for himself.
    Here was comfort indeed! and quite as soon as Sir Thomas could place
dependence on such sources of good, Edmund was contributing to his father's ease
by improvement in the only point in which he had given him pain before -
improvement in his spirits. After wandering about and sitting under trees with
Fanny all the summer evenings, he had so well talked his mind into submission,
as to be very tolerably cheerful again.
    These were the circumstances and the hopes which gradually brought their
alleviation to Sir Thomas, deadening his sense of what was lost, and in part
reconciling him to himself; though the anguish arising from the conviction of
his own errors in the education of his daughters, was never to be entirely done
away.
    Too late he became aware how unfavourable to the character of any young
people, must be the totally opposite treatment which Maria and Julia had been
always experiencing at home, where the excessive indulgence and flattery of
their aunt had been continually contrasted with his own severity. He saw how ill
he had judged, in expecting to counteract what was wrong in Mrs. Norris, by its
reverse in himself, clearly saw that he had but increased the evil, by teaching
them to repress their spirits in his presence, as to make their real disposition
unknown to him, and sending them for all their indulgences to a person who had
been able to attach them only by the blindness of her affection, and the excess
of her praise.
    Here had been grievous mismanagement; but, bad as it was, he gradually grew
to feel that it had not been the most direful mistake in his plan of education.
Something must have been wanting within, or time would have worn away much of
its ill effect. He feared that principle, active principle, had been wanting,
that they had never been properly taught to govern their inclinations and
tempers, by that sense of duty which can alone suffice. They had been instructed
theoretically in their religion, but never required to bring it into daily
practice. To be distinguished for elegance and accomplishments - the authorised
object of their youth - could have had no useful influence that way, no moral
effect on the mind. He had meant them to be good, but his cares had been
directed to the understanding and manners, not the disposition; and of the
necessity of self-denial and humility, he feared they had never heard from any
lips that could profit them.
    Bitterly did he deplore a deficiency which now he could scarcely comprehend
to have been possible. Wretchedly