Bradshaw, and Rousseau. It was closely
expressive of its owners. Zachariah and Pauline were private
persons; they were, happily for them, committed to nothing, and were
not subsidised by their reputations to defend a system. They were
consequently free to think at large, and if they admired both Bunyan
and Rousseau, they were at liberty to do so. Zachariah, in a
measure, and a very large measure, had remained faithful to his
earliest beliefs--who is there that does not?--and although they had
been modified, they were still there; and he listened to Mr. Bradshaw
with the faith of thirty years ago. He also believed in a good many
things he had learned without him, and perhaps the old and the new
were not so discordant as at first sight they might have seemed to
be. He was not, in fact, despite all his love of logic, the "yes OR
no" from which most people cannot escape, but a "yes AND no"; not
immorally and through lack of resolution, but by reason of an
original receptivity and the circumstances of his training. If he
had been merely a student the case would have been different but he
was not a student. He was a journeyman printer; and hard work has a
tendency to demolish the distinctions of dialectics.
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