ss towards himself; he held it no virtue to frown at irremediable
faults.

See the difference between the impression a man makes on you when you
walk by his side in familiar talk, or look at him in his home, and the
figure he makes when seen from a lofty historical level, or even in the
eyes of a critical neighbour who thinks of him as an embodied system
or opinion rather than as a man. Mr. Roe, the "travelling preacher"
stationed at Treddleston, had included Mr. Irwine in a general statement
concerning the Church clergy in the surrounding district, whom he
described as men given up to the lusts of the flesh and the pride of
life; hunting and shooting, and adorning their own houses; asking what
shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be
clothed?--careless of dispensing the bread of life to their flocks,
preaching at best but a carnal and soul-benumbing morality, and
trafficking in the souls of men by receiving money for discharging the
pastoral office in parishes where they did not so much as look on the
faces of the people more than once a-year. The ecclesiastical historian,
too, looking into parliamentary reports of that period, finds honourable
members zealous for the Church, and untainted with any sympathy for
the "tribe of canting Methodists," making statements scarcely less
melancholy than that of Mr. Roe. And it is impossible for me to say that
Mr. Irwine was altogether belied by the generic classification assigned
him. He really had no very lofty aims, no theological enthusiasm: if I
were closely questioned, I should be obliged to confess that he felt
no serious alarms about the souls of his parishioners, and would have
thought it a mere loss of time to talk in a doctrinal and awakening
manner to old "Feyther Taft," or even to Chad Cranage the blacksmith.
If he had been in the habit of speaking theoretically, he would perhaps
have said that the only healthy form religion could take in such minds
was that of certain dim but strong emotions, suffusing themselves as a
hallowing influence over the family affections and neighbourly duties.
He thought the custom of baptism more important than its doctrine, and
that the religious benefits the peasant drew from the church where his
fathers worshipped and the sacred piece of turf where they lay buried
were but slightly dependent on a clear understanding of the Liturgy or
the sermon. Clearly the rector was not what is called in these days an
"earne