Therefore I have said but little
in my narrative of this man's feelings or doings as a clergyman. But
I must protest against its being on this account considered that Mr.
Robarts was indifferent to the duties of his clerical position. He
had been fond of pleasure and had given way to temptation,--as is
so customarily done by young men of six-and-twenty, who are placed
beyond control and who have means at command. Had he remained as a
curate till that age, subject in all his movements to the eye of
a superior, he would, we may say, have put his name to no bills,
have ridden after no hounds, have seen nothing of the iniquities of
Gatherum Castle. There are men of twenty-six as fit to stand alone
as ever they will be--fit to be prime ministers, heads of schools,
Judges on the Bench--almost fit to be bishops; but Mark Robarts had
not been one of them. He had within him many aptitudes for good, but
not the strengthened courage of a man to act up to them. The stuff of
which his manhood was to be formed had been slow of growth, as it is
with many men; and, consequently, when temptation was offered to him,
he had fallen. But he deeply grieved over his own stumbling, and from
time to time, as his periods of penitence came upon him, he resolved
that he would once more put his shoulder to the wheel as became one
who fights upon earth that battle for which he had put on the armour.
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