mankind....

CHAPTER THE THIRD

INTENTIONS AND THE LADY MARY CHRISTIAN

Sec. 1

I know that before the end of my Harbury days I was already dreaming of
a Career, of some great and conspicuous usefulness in the world. That
has always haunted my mind and haunts it now. I may be cured perhaps of
the large and showy anticipations of youth, I may have learnt to drop
the "great and conspicuous," but still I find it necessary to believe
that I matter, that I play a part no one else can play in a progress, in
a universal scheme moving towards triumphant ends.

Almost wholly I think I was dreaming of public service in those days.
The Harbury tradition pointed steadfastly towards the state, and all my
world was bare of allurements to any other type of ambition. Success in
art or literature did not appeal to us, and a Harbury boy would as soon
think of being a great tinker as a great philosopher. Science we called
"stinks"; our three science masters were _ex officio_ ridiculous and the
practical laboratory a refuge for oddities. But a good half of our
fathers at least were peers or members of parliament, and our sense of
politics was close and keen. History, and particularly history as it
came up through the eighteenth century to our own times, supplied us
with a gallery of intimate models, our great uncles and grandfathers and
ancestors at large figured abundantly in the story and furnished the
pattern to which we cut our anticipations of life. It was a season of
Imperialism, the picturesque Imperialism of the earlier Kipling phase,
and we were all of us enthusiasts for the Empire. It was the empire of
the White Man's Burthen in those days; the sordid anti-climax of the
Tariff Reform Movement was still some years ahead of us. It was easier
for us at Harbury to believe then than it has become since, in our own
racial and national and class supremacy. We were the Anglo-Saxons, the
elect of the earth, leading the world in social organization, in science
and economic method. In India and the east more particularly we were the
apostles of even-handed justice, relentless veracity, personal
cleanliness, and modern efficiency. In a spirit of adventurous
benevolence we were spreading those blessings over a reluctant and
occasionally recalcitrant world of people for the most part "colored."
Our success in this had aroused the bitter envy and rivalry of various
continental nations, and particularly of France, Russia, and German