He had moments of keen enjoyment; he laid up a great store of impressions and even a considerable sum of knowledge.

But, nevertheless, he was not destined to look back upon this episode with any particular complacency.

It was less delightful than it was supposed to be; it was less successful than it might have been.

By what unnatural element the cup of pleasure was adulterated, he would have been very much at a loss to say; but it was an incontestable fact that at times he sipped it as a medicine, rather than quaffed it as a nectar.

When people congratulated him on his opportunity of seeing the world, and said they envied him the privilege of seeing it so well, he felt even more than the usual degree of irritation produced by an insinuation that fortune thinks so poorly of us as to give us easy terms.