clergy, that even a clergy, though defective in life, zealous in duty
and cultivated in mind,--such a clergy as Alfred sought to found, and
as Lanfranc endeavoured (not without some success) to teach--would
have bowed his strong sense to that grand and subtle truth which
dwells in spiritual authority. But as it was, he stood aloof from the
rude superstition of his age, and early in life made himself the
arbiter of his own conscience. Reducing his religion to the simplest
elements of our creed, he found rather in the books of Heathen authors
than in the lives of the saints, his notions of the larger morality
which relates to the citizen and the man. The love of country; the
sense of justice; fortitude in adverse and temperance in prosperous
fortune, became portions of his very mind. Unlike his father, he
played no actor's part in those qualities which had won him the
popular heart. He was gentle and affable; above all, he was fair-
dealing and just, not because it was politic to seem, but his nature
to be, so.

Nevertheless, Harold's character, beautiful and sublime in many
respects as it was, had its strong leaven of human imperfection in
that very self-dependence which was born of his reason and his pride.
In resting so solely on man's perceptions of the right, he lost one
attribute of the true hero--faith. We do not mean that word in the
religious sense alone, but in the more comprehensive. He did not rely
on the Celestial Something pervading all nature, never seen, only felt
when duly courted, stronger and lovelier than what eye could behold
and mere reason could embrace. Believing, it is true, in God, he lost
those fine links that unite God to man's secret heart, and which are
woven alike from the simplicity of the child and the wisdom of the
poet. To use a modern illustration, his large mind was a "cupola
lighted from below."