With all his talent and taste (and he had much of both) Robert was deficient in consistency and intellectual manhood, wandered in bypaths of study, worked at music or at metaphysics when he should have been at Greek, and took at last a paltry degree.

Almost at the same time, the London house was disastrously wound up; Mr Herrick must begin the world again as a clerk in a strange office, and Robert relinquish his ambitions and accept with gratitude a career that he detested and despised.

He had no head for figures, no interest in affairs, detested the constraint of hours, and despised the aims and the success of merchants.

To grow rich was none of his ambitions; rather to do well.

A worse or a more bold young man would have refused the destiny; perhaps tried his future with his pen; perhaps enlisted.