 - is practically an
impossibility; whilst in the form of hope and the secondary compounds, patience,
impatience, resolve, curiosity, it is a constant fluctuation between pleasure
and pain.
    Sergeant Troy, being entirely innocent of the practice of expectation, was
never disappointed. To set against this negative gain there may have been some
positive losses from a certain narrowing of the higher tastes and sensations
which it entailed. But limitation of the capacity is never recognized as a loss
by the loser therefrom: in this attribute moral or æsthetic poverty contrasts
plausibly with material, since those who suffer do not mind it, whilst those who
mind it soon cease to suffer. It is not a denial of anything to have been always
without it, and what Troy had never enjoyed he did not miss; but, being fully
conscious that what sober people missed he enjoyed, his capacity, though really
less, seemed greater than theirs.
    He was moderately truthful towards men, but to women lied like a Cretan - a
system of ethics above all others calculated to win popularity at the first
flush of admission into lively society; and the possibility of the favour gained
being transitory had reference only to the future.
    He never passed the line which divides the spruce vices from the ugly; and
hence, though his morals had hardly been applauded, disapproval of them had
frequently been tempered with a smile. This treatment had led to his becoming a
sort of regrater of other men's gallantries, to his own aggrandizement as a
Corinthian, rather than to the moral profit of his hearers.
    His reason and his propensities had seldom any reciprocating influence,
having separated by mutual consent long ago: thence it sometimes happened that,
while his intentions were as honourable as could be wished, any particular deed
formed a dark background which threw them into fine relief. The sergeant's
vicious phases being the offspring of impulse, and his virtuous phases of cool
meditation, the latter had a modest tendency to be oftener heard of than seen.
    Troy was full of activity, but his activities were less of a locomotive than
a vegetative nature; and, never being based upon any original choice of
foundation or direction, they were exercised on whatever object chance might
place in their way. Hence, whilst he sometimes reached the brilliant in speech
because that was spontaneous, he fell below the commonplace in action, from
inability to guide incipient effort. He had a quick comprehension and
considerable force of character; but, being without the power to combine them,
the comprehension became engaged with trivialities whilst waiting for the will
to direct it, and the force wasted itself
