Page:Gaskell - North and South, vol. II, 1855.djvu/283

 wrong statement. He behaved in the most conscientious manner. He showed more resolute strength than I should ever have given him credit for formerly."

"Perhaps I have been wrongly informed. But I have been told, by his successor in the living—a clever, sensible man, and a thoroughly active clergyman—that there was no call upon Mr. Hale to do what he did, relinquish the living, and throw himself and his family on the tender mercies of private teaching in a manufacturing town; the bishop had offered him another living, it is true, but if he had come to entertain certain doubts, he could have remained where he was, and so had no occasion to resign. But the truth is, these country clergymen live such isolated lives—isolated, I mean, from all intercourse with men of equal cultivation with themselves, by whose minds they might regulate their own, and discover when they were going either too fast or too slow—that they are very apt to disturb themselves with imaginary doubts as to the articles of faith, and throw up certain opportunities of doing good for very uncertain fancies of their own."

"I differ from you. I do not think they are very apt to do as my poor friend Hale did." Mr. Bell was inwardly chafing.

"Perhaps I used too general an expression, in saying 'very apt.' But certainly, their lives are such as very often to produce either inordinate self-sufficiency, or a morbid state of conscience," replied Mr. Lennox with perfect coolness.

You don't meet with any self-sufficiency among the lawyers, for instance?" asked Mr. Bell. "And