nder youth,"--and the prelate
forced his grammar into the reluctant hands of Marmaduke, and sauntered
down one of the solitary alleys with his brother.

Long and earnest was their conference, and at one time keen were their
dispute's.

The archbishop had very little of the energy of Montagu or the
impetuosity of Warwick, but he had far more of what we now call mind, as
distinct from talent, than either; that is, he had not their capacities
for action, but he had a judgment and sagacity that made him considered
a wise and sound adviser: this he owed principally to the churchman's
love of ease, and to his freedom from the wear and tear of the passions
which gnawed the great minister and the aspiring courtier; his natural
intellect was also fostered by much learning. George Nevile had been
reared, by an Italian ecclesiastic, in all the subtle diplomacy of the
Church; and his ambition, despising lay objects (though he consented to
hold the office of chancellor), was concentrated in that kingdom over
kings which had animated the august dominators of religious Rome.
Though, as we have said, still in that age when the affections are
usually vivid, [He was consecrated Bishop of Exeter at the age of
twenty; at twenty-six he became Archbishop of York, and was under thirty
at the time referred to in the text.] George Nevile loved no human
creature,--not even his brothers; not even King Edward, who, with all
his vices, possessed so eminently the secret that wins men's hearts.
His early and entire absorption in the great religious community, which
stood apart from the laymen in order to control them, alienated him from
his kind; and his superior instruction only served to feed him with a
calm and icy contempt for all that prejudice, as he termed it, held dear
and precious. He despised the knight's wayward honour, the burgher's
crafty honesty. For him no such thing as principle existed; and
conscience itself lay dead in the folds of a fancied exemption from all
responsibility to the dull herd, that were but as wool and meat to the
churchman shepherd. But withal, if somewhat pedantic, he had in his
manner a suavity and elegance and polish which suited well his high
station, and gave persuasion to his counsels. In all externals he was as
little like a priest as the high-born prelates of that day usually were.
In dress he rivalled the fopperies of the Plantagenet brothers; in the
chase he was more ardent than Warwick had been in his ea