nch
Revolution so much debated and so little understood. But some such
event, though not foreseen by the common, had been already foreboded
by the more enlightened, eye; and Wolfe, from a protracted residence
in France among the most discontented of its freer spirits, had brought
hope to that burning enthusiasm which had long made the pervading
passion of his existence.

Bold to ferocity, generous in devotion to folly in self-sacrifice,
unflinching in his tenets to a degree which rendered their ardour
ineffectual to all times, because utterly inapplicable to the present,
Wolfe was one of those zealots whose very virtues have the semblance
of vice, and whose very capacities for danger become harmless from the
rashness of their excess.

It was not among the philosophers and reasoners of France that Wolfe had
drawn strength to his opinions: whatever such companions might have
done to his tenets, they would at least have moderated his actions. The
philosopher may aid or expedite a change; but never does the philosopher
in any age or of any sect countenance a crime. But of philosophers Wolfe
knew little, and probably despised them for their temperance: it was
among fanatics--ignorant, but imaginative--that he had strengthened the
love without comprehending the nature of republicanism. Like Lucian's
painter, whose flattery portrayed the one-eyed prince in profile, he
viewed only that side of the question in which there was no defect, and
gave beauty to the whole by concealing the half. Thus, though on
his return to England herding with the common class of his reforming
brethren, Wolfe possessed many peculiarities and distinctions of
character which, in rendering him strikingly adapted to the purpose of
the novelist, must serve as a caution to the reader not to judge of the
class by the individual.

With a class of Republicans in England there was a strong tendency to
support their cause by reasoning. With Wolfe, whose mind was little
wedded to logic, all was the offspring of turbulent feelings, which, in
rejecting argument, substituted declamation for syllogism. This effected
a powerful and irreconcilable distinction between Wolfe and the better
part of his comrades; for the habits of cool reasoning, whether true or
false, are little likely to bias the mind towards those crimes to which
Wolfe's unregulated emotions might possibly urge him, and give to the
characters to which they are a sort of common denominator something