thought that Mr. Arabin was,
in his own estimation, sufficiently paid. Alas! Alas! The world was
mistaken, and Mr. Arabin was beginning to ascertain that such was the
case.

And here may I beg the reader not to be hard in his judgement upon
this man. Is not the state at which he has arrived the natural
result of efforts to reach that which is not the condition of
humanity? Is not modern stoicism, built though it be on Christianity,
as great an outrage on human nature as was the stoicism of the
ancients? The philosophy of Zeno was built on true laws, but on true
laws misunderstood and therefore misapplied. It is the same with our
Stoics here, who would teach us that wealth and worldly comfort and
happiness on earth are not worth the search. Alas, for a doctrine which
can find no believing pupils and no true teachers!

The case of Mr. Arabin was the more singular, as he belonged to
a branch of the Church of England well inclined to regard its
temporalities with avowed favour, and had habitually lived with
men who were accustomed to much worldly comfort. But such was his
idiosyncrasy that these very facts had produced within him, in early
life, a state of mind that was not natural to him. He was content to
be a High Churchman, if he could be so on principles of his own and
could strike out a course showing a marked difference from those with
whom he consorted. He was ready to be a partisan as long as he was
allowed to have a course of action and of thought unlike that of his
party. His party had indulged him, and he began to feel that his
party was right and himself wrong, just when such a conviction was
too late to be of service to him. He discovered, when such discovery
was no longer serviceable, that it would have been worth his while
to have worked for the usual pay assigned to work in this world and
have earned a wife and children, with a carriage for them to sit in;
to have earned a pleasant dining-room, in which his friends could
drink his wine, and the power of walking up the high street of his
country town, with the knowledge that all its tradesmen would have
gladly welcomed him within their doors. Other men arrived at those
convictions in their start in life and so worked up to them. To him
they had come when they were too late to be of use.

It has been said that Mr. Arabin was a man of pleasantry, and it
may be thought that such a state of mind as that described would be
antagonistic to humour. But surely s