He's the victim of a critical age; he has ceased to believe in himself and he doesn't know what to believe in.

When I attempt to tell him (because if I were he I know very well what I should believe in) he calls me a pampered bigot.
I believe he seriously thinks me an awful Philistine; he says I don't understand my time.

I understand it certainly better than he, who can neither abolish himself as a nuisance nor maintain himself as an institution." "He doesn't look very wretched," Isabel observed.
"Possibly not; though, being a man of a good deal of charming taste, I think he often has uncomfortable hours.

But what is it to say of a being of his opportunities that he's not miserable?
Besides, I believe he is." "I don't," said Isabel.
"Well," her cousin rejoined, "if he isn't he ought to be!" In the afternoon she spent an hour with her uncle on the lawn, where the old man sat, as usual, with his shawl over his legs and his large cup of diluted tea in his hands.

In the course of conversation he asked her what she thought of their late visitor.
Isabel was prompt.