1853 HAPPIER PROSPECTS 121 



the vicissitudes of thought and will he had passed 

 through this twelvemonth, and how the idea of giving 

 up all had affected him. " The spectre of a wasted 

 life has passed before me a vision of that servant 

 who hid his talent in a napkin and buried it." 



Early in 1853 he writes how much he was cheered 

 by his sister's advice and encouragement to persist in 

 the struggle; but the darkest moment was still to 

 come. His hopes from his candidatures crumbled away 

 one after the other; his leave from the Admiralty 

 was coming to an end, and there was small hope of 

 renewing it; the grant from Government remained 

 as unattainable as ever ; the long struggle had taught 

 him the full extent of his powers only, it seemed, to 

 end by denying him all opportunity for their use. 



And so the card house I have been so laboriously 

 building up these two years with all manner of hard 

 struggling will be tumbled down again, and iny small 

 light will be ignominiously snuffed out like that of better 

 men. ... I can submit if the fates are too strong. The 

 world is no better than an arena of gladiators, and I, a 

 stray savage, have been turned into it to fight my way 

 with my rude club among the steel-clad fighters. Well, 

 I have won my way into the front rank, and ought to be 

 thankful and deem it only the natural order of things if 

 I can get no further. 



And again in a letter of July 6, 1853 : 



I know that these three years have inconceivably 

 altered me that from being an idle man, only too happy 

 to flow into the humours of the moment, I have become 

 almost unable to exist without active intellectual excite- 

 ment I know that in this I find peace and rest such 



