lieve Agnes Wickfield to be as far
above you, and as far removed from all your aspirations, as that moon
herself!'

'Peaceful! Ain't she!' said Uriah. 'Very! Now confess, Master
Copperfield, that you haven't liked me quite as I have liked you. All
along you've thought me too umble now, I shouldn't wonder?'

'I am not fond of professions of humility,' I returned, 'or professions
of anything else.' 'There now!' said Uriah, looking flabby and
lead-coloured in the moonlight. 'Didn't I know it! But how little
you think of the rightful umbleness of a person in my station, Master
Copperfield! Father and me was both brought up at a foundation school
for boys; and mother, she was likewise brought up at a public, sort of
charitable, establishment. They taught us all a deal of umbleness--not
much else that I know of, from morning to night. We was to be umble to
this person, and umble to that; and to pull off our caps here, and
to make bows there; and always to know our place, and abase ourselves
before our betters. And we had such a lot of betters! Father got the
monitor-medal by being umble. So did I. Father got made a sexton by
being umble. He had the character, among the gentlefolks, of being
such a well-behaved man, that they were determined to bring him in. "Be
umble, Uriah," says father to me, "and you'll get on. It was what was
always being dinned into you and me at school; it's what goes down best.
Be umble," says father, "and you'll do!" And really it ain't done bad!'

It was the first time it had ever occurred to me, that this detestable
cant of false humility might have originated out of the Heep family. I
had seen the harvest, but had never thought of the seed.

'When I was quite a young boy,' said Uriah, 'I got to know what
umbleness did, and I took to it. I ate umble pie with an appetite. I
stopped at the umble point of my learning, and says I, "Hold hard!" When
you offered to teach me Latin, I knew better. "People like to be above
you," says father, "keep yourself down." I am very umble to the present
moment, Master Copperfield, but I've got a little power!'

And he said all this--I knew, as I saw his face in the moonlight--that
I might understand he was resolved to recompense himself by using his
power. I had never doubted his meanness, his craft and malice; but I
fully comprehended now, for the first time, what a base, unrelenting,
and revengeful spirit, must have been engendered by this early, and this
long,