sew garments; to strike with a sledge and a blacksmith's arm; to be
adepts, maybe, in all the cares for the outward wants of the body, but
who had never read Goethe or Schiller, and, possibly, neither
Shakespeare, Scott nor Robert Burns; and might not care to read or
study Latin, French, German or philosophy! It was for Mr. Ripley to
decide.

Did he then think of the little church in Purchase Street, and of what
he had solemnly said to the listening congregation? Had he not told
them that in every soul was a divine fire that aspired to the right no
matter how deeply it had been covered from sight or buried by the
troubling cares and surroundings that environed it: that there was a
divine equality of spirit at the base of all human lives?

Did he not hear reverberating in his soul the sublime passage, "If I be
lifted up, I will lift all others up to me"? Had he not been lifted up?
Had he not been supremely blest with health, strength, education,
talent, friends, companionship with the great and his cup filled full
of the sweet and sublime accords of the Christian faith? Had he not
been lifted up, not in crucifixion, but by myriads of silent blessings,
and was it not Christ-like to aid in lifting all others up also?

Alas for those who speak of Mr. Ripley's action at this time as
"Ripley's fall"! These were the moments when he achieved his glory,
when the greatness of his character arose, almost without exception,
above all others of the Transcendental School, who hovered around, and
wished to claim him as a bright example of a man separated from the
common herd of humanity, as a leader of a select group of men and
women, cultivated intellectually and socially. Then, as before, when he
saw what he deemed right, or, rather, when the intuitions of his soul