The comparison which had been suggested to him now, however, and the moral standard to which he had been suddenly forced to fit himself, was of a very different kind from that of the successful barrister or rising politician. And the effect upon his mind was complicated by the creation of so many new sentiments and necessities in himself, that the comparison went much further than a mere external contrast could have done. Ambition--a thing he had never known in his life--had sprung up within him; acquisitiveness--a desire to have, to possess, and to enjoy; an impatience of the present aspect and conditions of life; a sense of disgust with himself and his circumstances. These were not moral qualities, let us allow, nor amiable, nor in any way an improvement upon the gentle and light-hearted contentedness of the past. I am simply stating facts, and not demanding any approval of them. This was the new development to which Fanshawe had come. His past easy life was odious to him; he wanted to become on the spot something totally different--something which seemed to him better, though morally it might not perhaps be so. Certainly at the first offset it was not a moral improvement. To substitute dissatisfaction for content, uneasiness for calm, care and mental restlessness for the happy _insouciance_ of a man undisturbed by any thought of his career, was neither an advantage to himself, nor to anybody near him. He who had been the most good-natured, easy-going, well-conditioned fellow known to his friends, became all at once moody, uncertain, unmanageable. He had resolved to “make a change,” and he was pre-occupied, to the exclusion of everything else, with thoughts of what that change must be.