We wound up the morning, which was beautiful, by taking a ride, in the course of which I was amused with an instance of the sensitiveness with which Harrington’s cultivated mind recoiled from the grossness of vulgar and ignorant infidelity.  We called at the cottage of a little farmer, a tenant of his, somewhat notorious both for profanity and sensuality.  Presuming, I suppose, on his young landlord’s suspected heterodoxy, and thinking, perhaps, to curry favor with him, he ventured (I know not what led to it) to indulge in some stupid joke about the legion and the herd of swine.  “Sir,” said he, scratching his head, “the Devil, I reckon, must have been a more clever fellow than I thought, to make two thousand hogs go down a steep place into the sea; it is hard enough even to make them go where they will, and almost impossible make them go where they won’t.”

“The Devil, my good friend,” said Harrington, very gravely, “is a very clever fellow; and I hope you do not for a moment intend to compare yourself with him.  As to the supposed miracle, it would, no doubt, be hard to say which were most to be pitied, the devils in the swine, or the swine with the devils in them; but has it never struck you that the whole may be an allegorical representation of the miserable and destructive effects of the union of the two vices of sensuality and profanity?  They also (if all tales be true) lead to a steep place, but I have never heard that it ends in the water.  Now,” he continued, “I dare say you would laugh at that story which the Roman Catholics tell of St. Antony; namely, that he preached to the pigs’! —­yet it has had a very sound allegorical interpretation; we are told that it meant merely that he preached to country farmers; which, you see, is more than I have been doing.”

It was one of the many things which made me a sceptic as to whether he was one.  “Harrington,” said I, “at times I find it impossible to believe that you doubt the truth of Christianity.”

“Suppose I were to answer, that at times I doubt whether I doubt it or not, would not that be a thorough sceptic’s answer?” I admitted that it would be indeed.

____

July 8.  I was already in the library, writing, when Harrington came in to breakfast.  “You seem busy early,” said he.  I told him I was merely endeavoring to manifest my love for his future children.

“You know,” said I, “what Isocrates says, that it is right that children, as they inherit the other possessions, should also inherit the friendships of their fathers.”

“My children!” said he, very gravely; “I shall never have any.”