Affluence and age he knew, in honourable retirement; poverty and youth he knew, embarked in the struggle; indolence and youth he also knew, as it cumbered the ground; but youth and a competence, equipped with education, industry, and vigour, searching vainly in fields empty of opportunity, was to him a new spectacle.

He himself had intended to be a lawyer since he was fourteen.

There never had been any impediment to his intention, any qualification to his desire.

He was still under his father's roof, but that was for the general happiness; any time within the last eighteen months, if he had chosen to hurry fate, he might have selected another.

He was younger than Hesketh by a year, yet we may say that he had arrived, while Hesketh was still fidgeting at the starting-point.
"Why don't you farm ?" he asked once.
"Farming in England may pay in a quarter of a century, not before.