and as the true penitent, hating his self-besotted
error, asks from all coming life duty instead of joy, and service instead of
ease, so Rufus was perpetually on the watch lest he should ever again postpone
to some private affection a great public opportunity which to him was equivalent
to a command.
    Now here was an opportunity brought by a combination of that unexpected
incalculable kind which might be regarded as the divine emphasis invoking
especial attention to trivial events - an opportunity of securing what Rufus
Lyon had often wished for as a means of honouring truth, and exhibiting error in
the character of a stammering, halting, short-breathed usurper of office and
dignity. What was more exasperating to a zealous preacher, with whom copious
speech was not a difficulty but a relief - who never lacked argument, but only
combatants and listeners - than to reflect that there were thousands on
thousands of pulpits in this kingdom, supplied with handsome sounding-boards,
and occupying an advantageous position in buildings far larger than the chapel
in Malthouse Yard - buildings sure to be places of resort, even as the markets
were, if only from habit and interest; and that these pulpits were filled, or
rather made vacuous, by men whose privileged education in the ancient centres of
instruction issued in twenty minutes' formal reading of tepid exhortation or
probably infirm deductions from premises based on rotten scaffolding? And it is
in the nature of exasperation gradually to concentrate itself. The sincere
antipathy of a dog towards cats in general, necessarily takes the form of
indignant barking at the neighbour's black cat which makes daily trespass; the
bark at imagined cats, though a frequent exercise of the canine mind, is yet
comparatively feeble. Mr Lyon's sarcasm was not without an edge when he dilated
in general on an elaborate education for teachers which issued in the minimum of
teaching, but it found a whetstone in the particular example of that bad system
known as the rector of Treby Magna. There was nothing positive to be said
against the Rev. Augustus Debarry; his life could not be pronounced blame-worthy
except for its negatives. And the good Rufus was too pure-minded not to be glad
of that. He had no delight in vice as discrediting wicked opponents; he shrank
from dwelling on the images of cruelty or of grossness, and his indignation was
habitually inspired only by those moral and intellectual mistakes which darken
the soul but do not injure or degrade the temple of the body. If the rector had
been a less respectable man, Rufus would have more reluctantly made him an
object of antagonism; but as an incarnation of soul