 silver
white. His forehead was broad, not high; his face fresh and hale; the harshness
of the north was seen in his features, as it was heard in his voice; every trait
was thoroughly English, not a Norman line anywhere; it was an inelegant,
unclassic, unaristocratic mould of visage. Fine people would perhaps have called
it vulgar; sensible people would have termed it characteristic; shrewd people
would have delighted in it for the pith, sagacity, intelligence - the rude, yet
real originality marked in every lineament, latent in every furrow. But it was
an indocile, a scornful, and a sarcastic face; the face of a man difficult to
lead, and impossible to drive. His stature was rather tall, and he was well-made
and wiry, and had a stately integrity of port; there was not a suspicion of the
clown about him anywhere.
    I did not find it easy to sketch Mr. Yorke's person, but it is more
difficult to indicate his mind. If you expect to be treated to a Perfection,
reader, or even to a benevolent, philanthropic old gentleman in him, you are
mistaken. He has spoken with some sense, and with some good feeling, to Mr.
Moore; but you are not thence to conclude that he always spoke and thought
justly and kindly.
    Mr. Yorke, in the first place, was without the organ of Veneration - a great
want, and which throws a man wrong on every point where veneration is required.
Secondly, he was without the organ of Comparison - a deficiency which strips a
man of sympathy; and, thirdly, he had too little of the organs of Benevolence
and Ideality, which took the glory and softness from his nature, and for him
diminished those divine qualities throughout the universe.
    The want of veneration made him intolerant to those above him: kings and
nobles and priests, dynasties and parliaments and establishments, with all their
doings, most of their enactments, their forms, their rights, their claims, were
to him an abomination - all rubbish; he found no use or pleasure in them, and
believed it would be clear gain, and no damage to the world, if its high places
were razed, and their occupants crushed in the fall. The want of veneration,
too, made him dead at heart to the electric delight of admiring what is
admirable; it dried up a thousand pure sources of enjoyment; it withered a
thousand vivid pleasures. He was not irreligious, though a member of no sect;
but his religion could not be that of one
