ot a
sceptic, He has believed more and disbelieved more, and both one
and the other for less reason, than any other man I know. He
used to send me the strangest letters when I was abroad, and almost
every one presented him under some new phase. No, he is no sceptic.
If he has rejected almost every thing, he has also embraced almost
every thing; at each point in his career, his versatile faith has
found him some system to replace that he had abandoned; and he is
now a dogmatist par excellence, for he has adopted a theory of
religion which formally abjures intellect and logic, and is as
sincerely abjured by them. If the difficulties he has successively
encountered had been seen all at once, I fancy he would have been
much where I am. Poor George! 'Sufficient unto the day,' with him,
is the theology 'thereof'! I picture him to myself going out of a
morning, with his new theological dress upon him, and, chancing to
meet with some friend, who protests there is some thing or other
not quite 'comme il faut,' he proceeds with infinite complacency
to alter that portion of his attire; the new costume is found
equally obnoxious to the criticism of somebody else, and off it
goes like the rest."

This was a ludicrous, but not untrue, representation of George
Fellows's mind; only the "friend" in the image must be supposed to
mean his own wayward fancy; for he is not particularly amenable
(though very amiable) to external influences. So dominant, however,
is present feeling and impulse, or so deficient is he in
comprehensiveness, that he often takes up with the most trumpery
arguments; that is, for a few days at a time. Yet he does not want
acuteness. I have known him shine strongly (as has been said of
some one else) upon an angle of a subject; but he never sheds over
its whole surface equable illumination. Where evidence is complicated
and various, and consists of many opposing or modifying elements,
he never troubles himself to compute the sum total, and strike a fair
balance. He stands aghast in the presence of an objection which he
cannot solve, and loses all presence of mind in its contemplation.
He seldom considers whether there are not still greater objections
on the other side, nor how much farther, if a principle be just,
it ought to carry him. The mode in which he looks at a subject often
reminds me of the way in which the eye, according to metaphysicians,
surveys an extensive landscape. It sees, they say, only a point at