And perhaps he was the only person in
the world who did not think his sisters uninteresting and superfluous;
for his was one of those large-hearted, sweet-blooded natures that never
know a narrow or a grudging thought; Epicurean, if you will, with no
enthusiasm, no self-scourging sense of duty; but yet, as you have seen,
of a sufficiently subtle moral fibre to have an unwearying tenderness
for obscure and monotonous suffering. It was his large-hearted
indulgence that made him ignore his mother's hardness towards her
daughters, which was the more striking from its contrast with her doting
fondness 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.
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