CHAPTER VI.
Wind and rain interfered with Lashmar's project for the early morning.
He had meant to ramble about the town for an hour before going out to Shawe.

Unable to do this, he bought half-a-dozen newspapers, and read all the leading articles and the political news with close attention.
As a rule, this kind of study had little attraction for him; he was anything but well-informed on current politics; he understood very imperfectly the British constitution, and had still less insight into the details of party organisation and conflict.

All that kind of thing he was wont to regard as unworthy of his scrutiny.

For him, large ideas, world-embracing theories, the philosophy of civilisation.

Few Englishmen had a smaller endowment of practical ability; few, on the other hand, delighted as he did in speculative system, or could grasp and exhibit in such lucid entirety hypothetical laws.