em. By the strenuous advice of Hamilton he was induced to keep out
of these complex English questions altogether. Ericson yielded, knowing
that Hamilton was advising him for the best; but he had a good deal of
the Don Quixote in his nature; and having now a sort of enforced
idleness put upon him, he felt a secret yearning for some enterprise to
set the world right in other directions than that of Gloria.

There was a certain indolence in Ericson's nature. It was the indolence
which is perfectly consistent with a course of tremendous and sustained
energy. It was the nature which says to itself at one moment, 'Up and do
the work,' and goes for the work with unconquerable earnestness until
the work is done, and then says, 'Very good; now the work is done, let
us rest and smoke and talk over other things.' Nature is one thing;
character is another. We start with a certain kind of nature; we beat it
and mould it, or it is beaten and moulded for us, into character. Even
Hamilton was never quite certain whether Nature had meant Ericson for a
dreamer, and Ericson and Fortune co-operating had hammered him into a
worker, or whether Nature had moulded him for a worker, and his own
tastes for contemplation and for reading and for rest had softened him
down into a dreamer.

'The condition of this country horrifies me, Hamilton,' he said, when
left alone with his devoted follower. 'I don't see any way out of it. I
find no one who even professes to see any way out of it. I don't see any
people getting on well but the trading class.'

'_But_ the trading class?' Hamilton asked, with a quiet smile.

'You mean that if the trading class are getting on well the country in
the end will get on well?'

'It would look like that,' Hamilton answered; 'wouldn't it? This is a
country of trade. If our trade is sound, our heart is sound.'

'But what is becoming of the land, what is becoming of the peasant? What
is becoming of the East End population? I don't see how trade helps any
of these. Read the accounts from Liverpool, from Manchester, from
Sheffield, from anywhere: nothing but competition and strikes and
general misery. And, look here, I can't bear the idea of everything in
life being swallowed up in the great cities, and the peasantry of
England totally disappearing, and being succeeded by a gaunt, ragged
class of half-starved labourers in big towns. Take my word for it,
Hamilton, a cursed day has come when we see _that_ day.'

'What c