mathematical scholarship in the Easter of his second year: he wished to
gratify Sir Hugo by some achievement, and the study of the higher
mathematics, having the growing fascination inherent in all thinking
which demands intensity, was making him a more exclusive worker than he
had been before.

But here came the old check which had been growing with his growth. He
found the inward bent toward comprehension and thoroughness diverging
more and more from the track marked out by the standards of
examination: he felt a heightening discontent with the wearing futility
and enfeebling strain of a demand for excessive retention and dexterity
without any insight into the principles which form the vital
connections of knowledge. (Deronda's undergraduateship occurred fifteen
years ago, when the perfection of our university methods was not yet
indisputable.) In hours when his dissatisfaction was strong upon him he
reproached himself for having been attracted by the conventional
advantage of belonging to an English university, and was tempted toward
the project of asking Sir Hugo to let him quit Cambridge and pursue a
more independent line of study abroad. The germs of this inclination
had been already stirring in his boyish love of universal history,
which made him want to be at home in foreign countries, and follow in
imagination the traveling students of the middle ages. He longed now to
have the sort of apprenticeship to life which would not shape him too
definitely, and rob him of the choice that might come from a free
growth. One sees that Deronda's demerits were likely to be on the side
of reflective hesitation, and this tendency was encouraged by his
position; there was no need for him to get an immediate income, or to
fit himself in haste for a profession; and his sensibility to the
half-known facts of his parentage made him an excuse for lingering
longer than others in a state of social neutrality. Other men, he
inwardly said, had a more definite place and duties. But the project
which flattered his inclination might not have gone beyond the stage of
ineffective brooding, if certain circumstances had not quickened it
into action.

The circumstances arose out of an enthusiastic friendship which
extended into his after-life. Of the same year with himself, and
occupying small rooms close to his, was a youth who had come as an
exhibitioner from Christ's Hospital, and had eccentricities enough for
a Charles Lamb. Only to loo