He
never busied himself about religion or philosophy; indeed he had had
no training which would have led him to take an interest in abstract
questions, but he read all kinds of romances and poetry without any
order and upon no system. He had no discriminating faculty, and
mixed up together the most heterogeneous mass of trumpery novels,
French translations, and the best English authors, provided only they
were unworldly or sentimental. Neither did he know how far to take
what he read and use it in his daily life. He often selected some
fantastical motive which he had found set forth as operative in one
of his heroes, and he brought it into his business, much to the
astonishment of his masters and customers. For this reason he was
not stable. He changed employers two or three times; and, so far as
I could make out, his ground of objection to each of the firms whom
he left might have been a ground of dislike in a girl to a suitor,
but certainly nothing more. During the intervals of his engagements,
unless he was pressed for money, he did nothing--not from laziness,
but because he had got a notion in his head that his mind wanted rest
and reinvigoration. His habit then was to consume the whole day--day
after day--in reading or in walking out by himself.
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