Page:Henry Northcote (IA henrynorthcote00snairich).pdf/203

 scorn of the unsuccessful for those who have succeeded. The passion with which it had endowed him was nothing more, most probably, than a monomania of egotism. How consummate was the folly which could mistake the will for the deed, the vaulting ambition for the thing itself!

On the few occasions, some seven or eight in all, in which he had turned an honest guinea, mostly at the police-court, he had betrayed no surprising aptitude for his profession. There had been times, even in affairs so trivial, when his highly strung nervous organization had overpowered the will. He had not been exempt from the commission of errors; he recalled with horror that once or twice it had fallen to his lot to be put out of countenance by his adversary; while once at least he had drawn down upon himself the animadversions of the presiding deity. Surely there was nothing in this rather pitiful career to provide a motive for this overweening arrogance.

He grew the more amazed at his own hardihood as he walked along. To what fatal blindness did he owe it that from the beginning his true position had not been revealed to him? Where were the credentials that fitted him to undertake a task so stupendous? What achievement had he to his name that he should venture to launch his criticisms against those who had been through the fray and had emerged victorious? How could he have failed to appreciate that abstract theory was never able to withstand the impact of experience! It was well enough in the privacy of his garret to conceive ideas and to sustain his faculties with dreams of a future that could never be, but once