The case was no better when
he got back to London and went through his last season. London
had become his vice. He loved his haunts, his houses, his habits,
and even his hansom cabs. He loved growling like an Englishman,
and going into society where he knew not a face, and cared not a
straw. He lived deep into the lives and loves and disappointments
of his friends. When at last he found himself back again at
Liverpool, his heart wrenched by the act of parting, he moved
mechanically, unstrung, but he had no more acquired education
than when he first trod the steps of the Adelphi Hotel in
November, 1858. He could see only one great change, and this was
wholly in years. Eaton Hall no longer impressed his imagination;
even the architecture of Chester roused but a sleepy interest; he
felt no sensation whatever in the atmosphere of the British
peerage, but mainly an habitual dislike to most of the people who
frequented their country houses; he had become English to the
point of sharing their petty social divisions, their dislikes and
prejudices against each other; he took England no longer with the
awe of American youth, but with the habit of an old and rather
worn suit of clothes. As far as he knew, this was all that
Englishmen meant by social education, but in any case it was all
the education he had gained from seven years in London.
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