idea of the extent to which, in Mordaunt's character, principle
predominated over inclination, and regard for others over the love of
self, when we see him tearing his spirit from its beloved retreats and
abstracted contemplations, and devoting it to duties from which its
fastidious and refined characteristics were particularly calculated to
revolt. When we have considered his attachment to the hermitage, we
can appreciate the virtue which made him among the most active
citizens in the great world; when we have considered the natural
selfishness of grief, the pride of philosophy, the indolence of
meditation, the eloquence of wealth, which says, "Rest, and toil not,"
and the temptation within, which says, "Obey the voice,"--when we have
considered these, we can perhaps do justice to the man who, sometimes
on foot and in the coarsest attire, travelled from inn to inn and from
hut to hut; who made human misery the object of his search and human
happiness of his desire; who, breaking aside an aversion to rude
contact, almost feminine in its extreme, voluntarily sought the
meanest companions, and subjected himself to the coarsest intrusions;
for whom the wail of affliction or the moan of hunger was as a summons
which allowed neither hesitation nor appeal; who seemed possessed of a
ubiquity for the purposes of good almost resembling that attributed to
the wanderer in the magnificent fable of Melmoth for the temptations
to evil; who, by a zeal and labour that brought to habit and
inclination a thousand martyrdoms, made his life a very hour-glass, in
which each sand was a good deed or a virtuous design.

Many plunge into public affairs, to which they have had a previous
distaste, from the desire of losing the memory of a private
affliction; but so far from wishing to heal the wounds of remembrance
by the anodynes which society can afford, it was only in retirement
that Mordaunt found the flowers from which balm could be distilled.