accompanied by a lethargic temper; but it threatened to become terrible
and dangerous in one who, in default of imagination, possessed abundance
of passion: and this was the case with the young outcast. Passion, in
him, comprehended many of the worst emotions which militate against
human happiness. You could not contradict him but you raised quick
choler; you could not speak of wealth, but the cheek paled with gnawing
envy. The astonishing natural advantages of this poor boy his beauty,
his readiness, the daring spirit that breathed around him like a fiery
atmosphere--had raised his constitutional self-confidence into an
arrogance that turned his very claims to admiration into prejudices
against him. Irascible, envious, arrogant,--bad enough, but not the
worst, for these salient angles were all varnished over with a cold,
repellent cynicism,--his passions vented themselves in sneers. There
seemed in him no moral susceptibility, and, what was more remarkable in
a proud nature, little or nothing of the true point of honor. He had,
to a morbid excess, that desire to rise which is vulgarly called
"ambition," but no apparent wish for fame or esteem or the love of his
species; only the hard wish to succeed, not shine, not serve,--succeed,
that he might have the right to despise a world which galled his self-
conceit, and enjoy the pleasures which the redundant nervous life in him
seemed to crave. Such were the more patent attributes of a character
that, ominous as it was, yet interested me, and yet appeared to me to be
redeemable,--nay, to have in it the rude elements of a certain
greatness. Ought we not to make something great out of a youth, under
twenty, who has, in the highest degree, quickness to conceive and
courage to execute? On the other hand, all faculties that can make
greatness, contain those that can attain goodness. In the savage
Scandinavian or the ruthless Frank lay the germs of a Sidney or a
Bayard. What would the best of us be if he were suddenly placed at war
with the whole world? And this fierce spirit was at war with the whole