those who can never see more than one side of a question at a time,
in spite of their seeing that side with singular clearness of mental
vision. In after life, he often met with mere lads who seemed to him
to be years and years in advance of what he had been at their age,
and would say, smiling, "With a great sum obtained I this freedom;
but thou wast free-born."

Yet when one comes to think of it, a late development and laborious
growth are generally more fruitful than those which are over-early
luxuriant. Drawing an illustration from the art of painting, with
which he was well acquainted, my brother used to say that all the
greatest painters had begun with a hard and precise manner from which
they had only broken after several years of effort; and that in like
manner all the early schools were founded upon definiteness of
outline to the exclusion of truth of effect. This may be true; but
in my brother's case there was something even more unpromising than
this; there was a commonness, so to speak, of mental execution, from
which no one could have foreseen his after-emancipation. Yet in the
course of time he was indeed emancipated to the very uttermost, while
his bonds will, I firmly trust, be found to have been of inestimable
service to the whole human race.

For although it was so many years before he was enabled to see the
Christian scheme AS A WHOLE, or even to conceive the idea that there
was any whole at all, other than each one of the stages of opinion
through which he was at the time passing; yet when the idea was at
length presented to him by one whom I must not name, the discarded
fragments of his faith assumed shape, and formed themselves into a
consistently organised scheme. Then became apparent the value of his
knowledge of the details of so many different sides of Christian