, their dread of him has died
away; for in three years he has not taken three fees.

Nevertheless, John Bold is a clever man, and would, with practice,
be a clever surgeon; but he has got quite into another line of life.
Having enough to live on, he has not been forced to work for bread;
he has declined to subject himself to what he calls the drudgery of
the profession, by which, I believe, he means the general work of a
practising surgeon; and has found other employment. He frequently
binds up the bruises and sets the limbs of such of the poorer classes
as profess his way of thinking,--but this he does for love. Now I
will not say that the archdeacon is strictly correct in stigmatising
John Bold as a demagogue, for I hardly know how extreme must be a
man's opinions before he can be justly so called; but Bold is a strong
reformer. His passion is the reform of all abuses; state abuses,
church abuses, corporation abuses (he has got himself elected a town
councillor of Barchester, and has so worried three consecutive mayors,
that it became somewhat difficult to find a fourth), abuses in
medical practice, and general abuses in the world at large. Bold is
thoroughly sincere in his patriotic endeavours to mend mankind, and
there is something to be admired in the energy with which he devotes
himself to remedying evil and stopping injustice; but I fear that
he is too much imbued with the idea that he has a special mission
for reforming. It would be well if one so young had a little
more diffidence himself, and more trust in the honest purposes of
others,--if he could be brought to believe that old customs need not
necessarily be evil, and that changes may possibly be dangerous; but
no, Bold has all the ardour and all the self-assurance of a Danton,
and hurls his anathemas against time-honoured practices with the
violence of a French Jacobin.

No wonder that Dr Grantly should regard Bold as a firebrand, falling,
as he has done, almost in the centre of the quiet ancient close of
Barchester Cathedral. Dr Grantly would have him avoided as the
plague; but the old Doctor and Mr Harding were fast friends. Young
Johnny Bold used to play as a boy on Mr Harding's lawn; he has many a
time won the precentor's heart by listening with rapt attention to his
sacred strains; and since those days, to tell the truth at once, he
has nearly won another heart within the same walls.

Eleanor Harding has not plighted her troth to John Bold,