private life; that
is to say, he contented himself with loafing about the streets of Hoxton
and the City, and was at home by eleven o'clock nightly, perfectly
sober. The character of this young man was that of a distinct class,
comprising the sons of mechanics who are ruined morally by being taught
to consider themselves above manual labour. Had he from the first been
put to a craft, he would in all likelihood have been no worse than the
ordinary English artisan--probably drinking too much and loafing on
Mondays, but not sinking below the level of his fellows in the workshop.
His positive fault was that shared by his brother and sister--personal
vanity. It was encouraged from the beginning by immunity from the only
kind of work for which he was fitted, and the undreamt-of revolution in
his prospects gave fatal momentum to all his worst tendencies. Keene and
Rodman successively did their best, though unintentionally, to ruin him.
He was now incapable of earning his living by any continuous work.
Since his return to London he had greatly extended his circle of
acquaintances, which consisted of idle fellows of the same type, youths
who hang about the lowest fringe of clerkdom till they definitely class
themselves either with the criminal community or with those who make a
living by unrecognised pursuits which at any time may chance to bring
them within the clutches of the law. To use a coarse but expressive
word, he was a hopeless blackguard.

Let us be just; 'Arry had, like every other man, his better moments. He
knew that he had made himself contemptible to his mother, to Richard,
and to Alice, and the knowledge was so far from agreeable that it often
drove him to recklessness. That was his way of doing homage to the
better life; he had no power of will to resist temptation, but he could
go to meet it doggedly out of sheer dissatisfaction with himself. Our
social state ensures destruction to such natures; it has no help for
them, no patient encouragement. Naturally he hardened himself in vicious
habits. Despised by his own people, he soothed his injured vanity by
winning a certain predominance among the contemptible. The fact that
he had been on the point of inheriting a fortune in itself gave him
standing; he told his story in public-houses and elsewhere, and relished
the distinction of having such a story to tell. Even as his brother
Richard could not rest unless he was prominent as an agitator, so
it became a necessi