enevolence; and one cloudy afternoon, in the end
of November, he mounted his roan mare with the determination of riding to
Paddiford and 'arguying' the point with Mr. Tryan.

The old gentleman's face looked very mournful as he rode along the dismal
Paddiford lanes, between rows of grimy houses, darkened with hand-looms,
while the black dust was whirled about him by the cold November wind. He
was thinking of the object which had brought him on this afternoon ride,
and his thoughts, according to his habit when alone, found vent every now
and then in audible speech. It seemed to him, as his eyes rested on this
scene of Mr. Tryan's labours, that he could understand the clergyman's
self-privation without resorting to Mr. Stickney's theory of defective
spiritual enlightenment. Do not philosophic doctors tell us that we are
unable to discern so much as a tree, except by an unconscious cunning
which combines many past and separate sensations; that no one sense is
independent of another, so that in the dark we can hardly taste a
fricassee, or tell whether our pipe is alight or not, and the most
intelligent boy, if accommodated with claws or hoofs instead of fingers,
would be likely to remain on the lowest form? If so, it is easy to
understand that our discernment of men's motives must depend on the
completeness of the elements we can bring from our own susceptibility and
our own experience. See to it, friend, before you pronounce a too hasty
judgement, that your own moral sensibilities are not of a hoofed or
clawed character. The keenest eye will not serve, unless you have the
delicate fingers, with their subtle nerve filaments, which elude
scientific lenses, and lose themselves in the invisible world of human
sensations.

As for Mr. Jerome, he drew the elements of his moral vision from the
depths of his veneration and pity. If he himself felt so much for these
poor things to whom life was so dim and meagre, what must the clergyman
feel who had undertaken before God to be their shepherd?

'Ah!' he whispered, interruptedly, 'it's too big a load for his
conscience, poor man! He wants to mek himself their brother, like; can't
abide to preach to the fastin' on a full stomach. Ah! he's better nor we
are, that's it--he's a deal better nor we are.'

Here Mr. Jerome shook his bridle violently, and looked up with an air of
moral courage, as if Mr. Stickney had been present, and liable to take
offence at this conclusion. A few minutes