How he used to roar in the
Gazette against the opposite party, and yet I never heard anything
from him myself but what was diffident and tender. He had acquired,
as an instrument necessary to him, an extraordinarily extravagant
style, and he laid about him with a bludgeon, which inevitably
descended on the heads of all prominent persons if they happened not
to be Conservative, no matter what their virtues might be. One
peculiarity, however, I noted in him. Although he ought every now
and then, when the subject was uppermost, to have flamed out in the
Gazette on behalf of the Church, I never saw a word from him on that
subject. He drew the line at religion. He did not mind acting his
part in things secular, for his performances were, I am sure, mostly
histrionic, but there he stopped. The unreality of his character was
a husk surrounding him, but it did not touch the core. It was as if
he had said to himself, "Political controversy is nothing to me, and,
what is more, is so uncertain that it matters little whether I say
yes or no, nor indeed does it matter if I say yes AND no, and I must
keep my wife and children from the workhouse; but when it comes to
the relationship of man to God, it is a different matter.
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