It was not so much that he found his allowance insufficient, for he had various means of supplementing it, one of them (at which we have already hinted) a strange one enough; but the wayward fit was on him that takes so many of us in the early dawn of manhood; he was restless and eager for change, and the lessons which his mother had caused him to receive in landscape-painting furnished him with an excuse for wandering.

She had had him taught to sketch, because it was a likely sort of accomplishment to aid the scheme of life which she had planned for him; and he had taken up with the art more seriously than with any thing else.

But it was not in Richard's nature to apply himself with assiduity to any pursuit.

Such callings as lay within his means and opportunities he was incapacitated for by education and temper.

He could not have occupied any subordinate position that required respectful behavior--submission to the will of a master.