ted in ignorance, and who could not
construe the Latin of the very prayers they pattered, should presume to
be the judges of educated men. It is possible--for his nature was
earnest--that a pure and enlightened clergy, that even a clergy, though
defective in life, zealous in duty and cultivated in mind,--such a clergy
as Alfred sought to found, and as Lanfranc endeavoured (not without some
success) to teach--would have bowed his strong sense to that grand and
subtle truth which dwells in spiritual authority. But as it was, he
stood aloof from the rude superstition of his age, and early in life made
himself the arbiter of his own conscience. Reducing his religion to the
simplest elements of our creed, he found rather in the books of Heathen
authors than in the lives of the saints, his notions of the larger
morality which relates to the citizen and the man. The love of country;
the sense of justice; fortitude in adverse and temperance in prosperous
fortune, became portions of his very mind. Unlike his father, he played
no actor's part in those qualities which had won him the popular heart.
He was gentle and affable; above all, he was fair-dealing and just, not
because it was politic to seem, but his nature to be, so.

Nevertheless, Harold's character, beautiful and sublime in many respects
as it was, had its strong leaven of human imperfection in that very
self-dependence which was born of his reason and his pride. In resting so
solely on man's perceptions of the right, he lost one attribute of the
true hero--faith. We do not mean that word in the religious sense alone,
but in the more comprehensive. He did not rely on the Celestial
Something pervading all nature, never seen, only felt when duly courted,
stronger and lovelier than what eye could behold and mere reason could
embrace. Believing, it is true, in God, he lost those fine links that
unite God to man's secret heart, and which are woven alike from the
simplicity of the child and the wisdom of the poet. To use a modern
illustration, his large mind was a "cupola lighted from below."

His bravery, though inflexible as the fiercest sea-king's, when need
arose for its exercise, was not his prominent characteristic. He
despised the brute valour of Tostig,--his bravery was a necessary part of
a firm and balanced manhood--the bravery of Hector, not Achilles.
Constitutionally averse to bloodshed, he could seem timid where daring
only gratified a wanton vanity, or