{ Footnote 4: See the account of Mrs. C. Ponten, in Gibbon's Life.}
"My dear boy," said Mrs. Howard to her nephew, when he first went to Westminster, "I shall not trouble you with a long chapter of advice: do you remember that answer of the oracle, which seemed to strike you so much the other day, when you were reading the life of Cicero?"
"Yes," said Charles, "I recollect it--I shall never forget it. When Cicero asked how he should arrive at the height of glory, the oracle answered, 'By making his own genius, and not the opinion of the people, the guide of his life.'"
"Well," said Mrs. Howard, smiling, "if I were your oracle, and you were to put the same question to me, I think I should make you nearly the same answer; except that I should change the word genius into good sense; and, instead of _the people_, I should say _the world_, which, in general, I think, means all the _silly people_ of one's acquaintance. Farewell: now go to the Westminster world."
Westminster was quite a new world to young Howard. The bustle and noise at first astonished his senses, and almost confounded his understanding; but he soon grew accustomed to the din, and familiarized to the sight of numbers. At first, he thought himself much inferior to all his companions, because practice had given them the power of doing many things with ease, which to him appeared difficult, merely because he had not been used to them. In all their games and plays, either of address or force, he found himself foiled. In a readiness of repartee, and a certain ease and volubility of conversation, he perceived his deficiency; and though he frequently was conscious that his ideas were more just, and his arguments better, than those of his companions, yet he could not at first bring out his ideas to advantage, or manage his arguments so as to stand his ground against the mixed raillery and sophistry of his school fellows. He had not yet the tone of his new society, and he was as much at a loss as a traveller in a foreign country, before he understands the language of a people who are vociferating round about him. As fast, however, as he learned to translate the language of his companions into his own, he discovered that there was not so much meaning in their expressions as he had been inclined to imagine whilst they had remained unintelligible: but he was good-humoured and good-natured, so that, upon the whole, he was much liked; and even his inferiority, in many little trials of skill, was, perhaps, in his favour. He laughed with those that laughed at him, let them triumph in his awkwardness, but still persisted in new trials, till at last, to the great surprise of the spectators, he succeeded.