,
active, good-tempered lad, with sharp eyes and a good aim; he delighted in
success and in predominance; but he did not long for an impossible predominance,
and become sour and sulky because it was impossible. He played at the games he
was clever in, and usually won; all other games he let alone, and thought them
of little worth. At home and at Eton he had been side by side with his stupid
elder brother Durfey, whom he despised; and he very early began to reflect that
since this Caliban in miniature was older than himself, he must carve out his
own fortune. That was a nuisance; and on the whole the world seemed rather
ill-arranged, at Eton especially, where there were many reasons why Harold made
no great figure. He was not sorry the money was wanting to send him to Oxford;
he did not see the good of Oxford; he had been surrounded by many things during
his short life, of which he had distinctly said to himself that he did not see
the good, and he was not disposed to venerate on the strength of any good that
others saw. He turned his back on home very cheerfully, though he was rather
fond of his mother, and very fond of Transome Court, and the river where he had
been used to fish; but he said to himself as he passed the lodge-gates, »I'll
get rich somehow, and have an estate of my own, and do what I like with it.«
This determined aiming at something not easy but clearly possible, marked the
direction in which Harold's nature was strong; he had the energetic will and
muscle, the self-confidence, the quick perception, and the narrow imagination
which make what is admiringly called the practical mind.
    Since then his character had been ripened by a various experience, and also
by much knowledge which he had set himself deliberately to gain. But the man was
no more than the boy writ large, with an extensive commentary. The years had
nourished an inclination to as much opposition as would enable him to assert his
own independence and power without throwing himself into that tabooed condition
which robs power of its triumph. And this inclination had helped his shrewdness
in forming judgments which were at once innovating and moderate. He was addicted
at once to rebellion and to conformity, and only an intimate personal knowledge
could enable any one to predict where his conformity would begin. The limit was
not defined by theory, but was drawn in an irregular zigzag by early disposition
and association; and his resolution, of