their name to struggle and command.

Rough was this man often in his exterior, though really gentle and kind-
hearted. John Ardworth had sacrificed to no Graces; he would have thrown
Lord Chesterfield into a fever. Not that he was ever vulgar, for
vulgarity implies affectation of refinement; but he talked loud and
laughed loud if the whim seized him, and rubbed his great hands with a
boyish heartiness of glee if he discomfited an adversary in argument.
Or, sometimes, he would sit abstracted and moody, and answer briefly and
boorishly those who interrupted him. Young men were mostly afraid of
him, though he wanted but fame to have a set of admiring disciples. Old
men censured his presumption and recoiled from the novelty of his ideas.
Women alone liked and appreciated him, as, with their finer insight into
character, they generally do what is honest and sterling. Some strange
failings, too, had John Ardworth,--some of the usual vagaries and
contradictions of clever men. As a system, he was rigidly abstemious.
For days together he would drink nothing but water, eat nothing but
bread, or hard biscuit, or a couple of eggs; then, having wound up some
allotted portion of work, Ardworth would indulge what he called a self-
saturnalia,--would stride off with old college friends to an inn in one
of the suburbs, and spend, as he said triumphantly, "a day of blessed
debauch!" Innocent enough, for the most part, the debauch was,
consisting in cracking jests, stringing puns, a fish dinner, perhaps, and
an extra bottle or two of fiery port. Sometimes this jollity, which was
always loud and uproarious, found its scene in one of the cider-cellars
or midnight taverns; but Ardworth's labours on the Press made that latter
dissipation extremely rare. These relaxations were always succeeded by a
mien more than usually grave, a manner more than usually curt and
ungracious, an application more than ever rigorous and intense. John
Ardworth was not a good-tempered man, but he was the best-natured man