cellence availed so
little, could he expect more from the hard ways of skill and force? The
terrible land of his exile loomed before him a frigid, an impregnable
mass. Doubtless he had made some slight impression: it was true that
he had gained the respect of his fellow workers, that his probity, his
industry, his exactitude, had been recognised, that he was a highly
influential, an extremely important man. But how far, how very far,
was all this from the goal of his ambitions! How feeble and futile his
efforts seemed against the enormous coagulation of dullness, of folly,
of slackness, of ignorance, of confusion that confronted him! He might
have the strength or the ingenuity to make some small change for the
better here or there--to rearrange some detail, to abolish some anomaly,
to insist upon some obvious reform; but the heart of the appalling
organism remained untouched. England lumbered on, impervious and
self-satisfied, in her old intolerable course. He threw himself across
the path of the monster with rigid purpose and set teeth, but he was
brushed aside. Yes! even Palmerston was still unconquered--was still
there to afflict him with his jauntiness, his muddle-headedness, his
utter lack of principle. It was too much. Neither nature nor the Baron
had given him a sanguine spirit; the seeds of pessimism, once lodged
within him, flourished in a propitious soil. He

"questioned things, and did not find
One that would answer to his mind;
And all the world appeared unkind."

He believed that he was a failure and he began to despair.

Yet Stockmar had told him that he must "never relax," and he never
would. He would go on, working to the utmost and striving for the
highest, to the bitter end. His industry grew almost maniacal.
Earlier and earlier was the green lamp lighted; more vast grew the
correspondence; more searching the examination of the newspapers; the
interminable memoranda more punctilious, analytical, and precise. His
very recreations became duties. He enjoyed himself by time-table, went
deer-stalking with meticulous gusto, and made puns at lunch--it was the
right thing to do. The mechanism worked with astonishing efficiency,
but it never rested and it was never oiled. In dry exactitude the
innumerable cog-wheels perpetually revolved. No, whatever happened, the
Prince would not relax; he had absorbed the doctrines of Stockmar too
thoroughly. He knew what was right, and, at all costs, he wou