poken is
taken instead of the fact itself, and to that as a ground-plan all that
follows is fitted. People listen so badly, even when not sleepily, that
the wonder is any thing of consequence should ever be even approximately
understood. How appalling it would be to one anxious to convey a
meaning, to see the shapes his words assumed in the mind of his
listening friend! For, in place of falling upon the table of his
perception, kept steady by will and judgment, he would see them tumble
upon the sounding-board of his imagination, ever vibrating, and there be
danced like sand into all manner of shapes, according to the tune played
by the capricious instrument. Thus, in Glaston, the strangest stories of
barbarity and cruelty were now attributed to a man entirely incapable of
them. He was not one of the foul seekers after knowledge, and if he had
had a presentiment of the natural tendency of his opinions, he would
have trembled at the vision, and set himself to discover whether there
might not be truth in another way of things.

As he went about in the afternoon amongst his sick and needy, the curate
heard several of these ill reports. Some communicated them to ease their
own horror, others in the notion of pleasing the believer by revolting
news of the unbeliever. In one house he was told that the poor young man
whom Dr. Faber had enticed to be his assistant, had behaved in the most
gentlemanly fashion, had thrown up his situation, consenting to the loss
of his salary, rather than connive at the horrors of cruelty in which
the doctor claimed his help. Great moan was made over the pity that
such a nice man should be given to such abominations; but where was the
wonder, some said, seeing he was the enemy of God, that he should be the
enemy of the beasts God had made? Much truth, and many wise reflections
were uttered, only they were not "as level as the cannon to his blank,"
for they were pointed at the wrong man.

There was one thing in which Wingfold differed from most of his
parishioners: he could hear with his judgment, and make his imagination
lie still. At the same time, in order to arrive the more certainly at
the truth, in any matter presented to him, he would, in general, listen
to the end of what any body had to say. So doing he let eagerness
exhaust itself, and did not by opposition in the first heat of
narration, excite partisan interest, or wake malevolent caution. If the
communication was worthy, he thus got a