seem to be, it was instantaneously the effect of reflection, of a will
which governed the strange conflict of emotional and moral energy with
conscious physical debility; a conflict whose strange contrasts were
forever warring vividly within. The dominion exercised over the natural
violence of his character reminds us of the melancholy force of those
beings who seek their strength in isolation and entire self-control,
conscious of the uselessness of their vivid indignation and vexation,
and too jealous of the mysteries of their passions to betray them
gratuitously.

He could pardon in the most noble manner. No rancor remained in his
heart toward those who had wounded him, though such wounds penetrated
deeply in his soul, and fermented there in vague pain and internal
suffering, so that long after the exciting cause had been effaced from
his memory, he still experienced the secret torture. By dint of constant
effort, in spite of his acute and tormenting sensibilities, he subjected
his feelings to the rule rather of what ought to be, than of what is;
thus he was grateful for services proceeding rather from good intentions
than from a knowledge of what would have been agreeable to him; from
friendship which wounded him, because not aware of his acute but
concealed susceptibility. Nevertheless the wounds caused by such awkward
miscomprehension are, of all others, the most difficult for nervous
temperaments to bear. Condemned to repress their vexation, such natures
are excited by degrees to a state of constantly gnawing irritability,
which they can never attribute to the true cause. It would be a gross
mistake to imagine that this irritation existed without provocation.
But as a dereliction from what appeared to him to be the most honorable
course of conduct was a temptation which he was never called upon to
resist, because in all probability it never presented itself to him;
so he never, in the presence of the more vigorous and therefore more
brusque and positive individualities than his own, unveiled the
shudder, if repulsion be too strong a term, caused by their contact or
association.

The reserve which marked his intercourse with others, extended to
all subjects to which the fanaticism of opinion can attach. His own
sentiments could only be estimated by that which he did not do in the
narrow limits of his activity. His patriotism was revealed in the course
taken by his genius, in the choice of his friends, in the prefe