of patience and sympathy. He had been left an orphan at an early age—too early for memory—and had forced his own hard way in a hard world: love had never made the excitement of his youth, nor the relaxation of his manhood. In short, he had passed through life without having experienced one softening influence. From sickness he never learnt the worth of kindness, nor had death ever taught him how sacred and how bitter is the thought of the beloved and of the dead. He had belonged to the church, from which, however, he had been ejected for non-conformity.
The loss of his benefice was small to him, in comparison with many of his brethren; for death succeeding death had put him in possession of much property belonging to distant relatives. Not such was the indignation with which he beheld the obedience exacted, and the authority exercised by the episcopal church. The dark and mysterious passages of Scripture became more than ever his constant study; and applying every denunciation to his own time, he firmly believed that judgment was at hand, and only waited some crowning iniquity to call down God's vengeance on a guilty land.
It is a humbling thing to human pride to observe that strength of mind does not preserve its possessor from indulging any favourite delusion; but that this very strength gives its own force to the belief. In the eyes of Richard Vernon all the
