having taken a deep root, give up
their hold of life so easily! And saintly men, who walk with God on earth, would
fain be away, to walk with him on the golden pavements of the New Jerusalem.«
    »Nay,« rejoined the young minister, putting his hand to his heart, with a
flush of pain flitting over his brow, »were I worthier to walk there, I could be
better content to toil here.«
    »Good men ever interpret themselves too meanly,« said the physician.
    In this manner, the mysterious old Roger Chillingworth became the medical
adviser of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. As not only the disease interested the
physician, but he was strongly moved to look into the character and qualities of
the patient, these two men, so different in age, came gradually to spend much
time together. For the sake of the minister's health, and to enable the leech to
gather plants with healing balm in them, they took long walks on the sea-shore,
or in the forest; mingling various talk with the plash and murmur of the waves,
and the solemn wind-anthem among the tree-tops. Often, likewise, one was the
guest of the other, in his place of study and retirement. There was a
fascination for the minister in the company of the man of science, in whom he
recognized an intellectual cultivation of no moderate depth or scope; together
with a range and freedom of ideas, that he would have vainly looked for among
the members of his own profession. In truth, he was startled, if not shocked, to
find this attribute in the physician. Mr. Dimmesdale was a true priest, a true
religionist, with the reverential sentiment largely developed, and an order of
mind that impelled itself powerfully along the track of a creed, and wore its
passage continually deeper with the lapse of time. In no state of society would
he have been what is called a man of liberal views; it would always be essential
to his peace to feel the pressure of a faith about him, supporting, while it
confined him within its iron framework. Not the less, however, though with a
tremulous enjoyment, did he feel the occasional relief of looking at the
universe through the medium of another kind of intellect than those with which
he habitually held converse. It was as if a window were thrown open, admitting a
freer atmosphere into the close and stifled study, where his life was wasting
itself away, amid lamp-light, or obstructed day-beams, and the musty fragrance,