mparatively little that his intellectual
character was tainted with fanaticism and gloom.

I would not be mistaken to mean that he found his penitence easy, or
that he was, like Saint Paul, transformed as it were by a lightning
flash--"a fusile Christian." I say, there were--after his two
sicknesses and long suffering, and experiences bitter as wormwood--there
were, I say, no more _outward_ inconsistencies in his life; but I do not
say that _within_ there were no fierce, fearful struggles, so wearisome
at times that it almost seemed better to yield than to feel the
continued anguish of such mighty temptations. All this the man must
always go through who has warmed in his bosom the viper whose poisoned
fang has sent infection into his blood. But through God's grace Hazlet
was victorious: and as, when the civilisation of some infant colony is
advancing on the confines of a desert, the wild beasts retire before it,
until they become rare, and their howling is only heard in the lonely
night, and then even that sign of their fury is but a strange
occurrence, until it is heard no more; so in Hazlet, the many-headed
monsters, which breed in the slime of a fallen human heart, were one by
one slain or driven backwards by watchfulness, and shame, and prayer.

Julian and Lillyston had never shunned his society, either when he
breathed the odour of sanctity, or when he sank into the slough of
wretchlessness. Both of them were sufficiently conscious of the heart's
weakness to prevent them from the cold and melancholy presumption which
leads weak and sinful men to desert and denounce those whom the good
spirits have not yet deserted, and whom the good God has not finally
condemned. As long as he sought their society, they were always open to
his company, however distasteful; and the advice they gave him was
tendered in simple good-will--not as though from the haughty
vantage-ground of a superior excellence. Even when Hazlet was at the
worst--when to be seen with him, after the publicity of his vices,
involved something like a slur on a man's fair name--even in these his
worst days neither Julian nor Lillyston would have refused, had he so
desired it, to walk with him under the lime-tree avenue, or up and down
the cloisters of Warwick's Court.

But they naturally met him more often when his manner of life was
changed for the better, and were both glad to see that he had found the
jewel which adversity possessed. It happened t