 who knows how to venerate. He believed
in God and heaven; but his God and heaven were those of a man in whom awe,
imagination, and tenderness lack.
    The weakness of his powers of comparison made him inconsistent; while he
professed some excellent general doctrines of mutual toleration and forbearance,
he cherished towards certain classes a bigoted antipathy: he spoke of parsons
and all who belonged to parsons, of lords and the appendages of lords, with a
harshness, sometimes an insolence, as unjust as it was insufferable. He could
not place himself in the position of those he vituperated; he could not compare
their errors with their temptations, their defects with their disadvantages; he
could not realize the effect of such and such circumstances on himself similarly
situated, and he would often express the most ferocious and tyrannical wishes
regarding those who had acted, as he thought, ferociously and tyrannically. To
judge by his threats, he would have employed arbitrary, even cruel, means to
advance the cause of freedom and equality. Equality - yes, Mr. Yorke talked
about equality, but at heart he was a proud man; very friendly to his
workpeople, very good to all who were beneath him, and submitted quietly to be
beneath him, but haughty as Beelzebub to whomsoever the world deemed (for he
deemed no man) his superior. Revolt was in his blood: he could not bear control;
his father, his grandfather before him, could not bear it, and his children
after him never could.
    The want of general benevolence made him very impatient of imbecility, and
of all faults which grated on his strong, shrewd nature: it left no check to his
cutting sarcasm. As he was not merciful, he would sometimes wound and wound
again, without noticing how much he hurt, or caring how deep he thrust.
    As to the paucity of ideality in his mind, that can scarcely be called a
fault: a fine ear for music, a correct eye for colour and form, left him the
quality of taste; and who cares for imagination? Who does not think it a rather
dangerous, senseless attribute - akin to weakness - perhaps partaking of frenzy
- a disease rather than a gift of the mind?
    Probably all think it so, but those who possess - or fancy they possess -
it. To hear them speak, you would believe that their hearts would be cold if
that elixir did not flow about them; that their eyes would be dim if that flame
did not refine their vision; that they would be lonely if this strange companion
abandoned them. You would suppose that
