all this they have yet to
learn. It is all a new science to them, and they do not even know their
ignorance of it. Moreover, the world of to-day has no connection in
their minds with the world of yesterday; time is not a stream, but
stands before them round and full, like the moon. They do not know what
happened ten years ago, much less the annals of a century; the past does
not live to them in the present; they do not understand the worth of
contested points; names have no associations for them, and persons
kindle no recollections. They hear of men, and things, and projects, and
struggles, and principles; but everything comes and goes like the wind,
nothing makes an impression, nothing penetrates, nothing has its place
in their minds. They locate nothing; they have no system. They hear and
they forget; or they just recollect what they have once heard, they
can't tell where. Thus they have no consistency in their arguments; that
is, they argue one way to-day, and not exactly the other way to-morrow,
but indirectly the other way, at random. Their lines of argument
diverge; nothing comes to a point; there is no one centre in which their
mind sits, on which their judgment of men and things proceeds. This is
the state of many men all through life; and miserable politicians or
Churchmen they make, unless by good luck they are in safe hands, and
ruled by others, or are pledged to a course. Else they are at the mercy
of the winds and waves; and, without being Radical, Whig, Tory, or
Conservative, High Church or Low Church, they do Whig acts, Tory acts,
Catholic acts, and heretical acts, as the fit takes them, or as events
or parties drive them. And sometimes, when their self-importance is
hurt, they take refuge in the idea that all this is a proof that they
are unfettered, moderate, dispassionate, that they observe the mean,
that they are "no party men;" when they are, in fact, the most helpless
of slaves; for our strength in this world is, to be the subjects of the
reason, and our liberty, to be captives of the truth.

Now Charles Reding, a youth of twenty, could not be supposed to have
much of a view in religion or politics; but no clever man allows himself
to judge of things simply at hap-hazard; he is obliged, from a sort of
self-respect, to have some rule or other, true or false; and Charles was
very fond of the maxim, which he has already enunciated, that we must
measure people by what they are, and not by what they are n