ith this was the consciousness that he had
been meant to fail. His religious views were a vague Theism, coupled
with a certain tendency to determinism, to which his wanderings had
conducted him. Christian determinism he called it, because though his
old unquestioning view of the historical evidences of Christianity had
practically disappeared, yet his belief in Christian morality as the
highest system that had yet appeared in the world was unshaken. And it
was at this time, just after taking his degree, that he wrote a little
book, a species of imaginary biography which attained, to his surprise,
a certain vogue. The book was an extraordinarily formless and
irrelevant production, written upon no plan, into which he shovelled
all his vague speculations upon life. But its charm was its ingenuous
youthfulness and emotional sincerity; and although he afterwards came
to dislike the thought of the book so much, that at a later date he
bought up and destroyed all the copies of it that remained unsold, yet
for all that it had the value of being a perfectly sincere revelation
of personality, and represented a real, if a sentimental, experience.
The book was severely reviewed, but as it was published anonymously,
this gave Hugh little anxiety; and so he shouldered his burden, and
went out of the sheltered life into the wilderness of the world.

V

Practical Life--The Official World--Drudgery--Resignation--Retirement

There will be no attempt made here to trace in any detail the
monotonous years of Hugh's professional life, because they seemed to
him to have been in one sense lost years; there was at all events no
conscious growth in his soul. His spirit seemed to him afterwards to
have lain, during those years, like a worm in a cocoon, living a blind
life. Externally, indeed, they were the busiest time of his life. He
became a hard-worked official in the Civil Service. He lived in rooms
in London. He spent his day at the office, he composed innumerable
documents, he wrote endless letters; he seemed to himself, in a way, to
be useful; he did not dislike the work, and he found it interesting to
have to get up some detailed case, and to present it as lucidly as
possible. He began his official life with an intention of doing some
sort of literary work as well; but he found himself incapable of any
sustained effort. Still, he continued to write; he did a good deal of
reviewing, and kept a voluminous diary, in whi