Immediately after the Ordination arrived Mr. Hope, a very youthful,
small, and delicate-looking man, whom Mr. Dusautoy could have lifted
as easily as his own Fanny, with short sight, timid nature, scholarly
habits, weak nerves, and an inaudible voice.
Of great intellect, having read deeply, and reading still more
deeply, he had the utmost dread of ladies, and not even his
countrywoman, Mrs. Dusautoy, could draw him out. He threw his whole
soul into the work, winning the hearts of the infant-school and the
old women, but discomfiting the congregation by the weakness of his
voice, and the length and depth of his sermons. There was one in
especial which very few heard, and no one entered into except Sophy,
who held an hour's argument over it with her father, till they
arrived at such lengthy names of heresies, that poor grandmamma asked
if it were right to talk Persian on a Sunday evening.
He conscientiously tutored his two pupils, but there was no common
ground between him and them. Excepting his extra intellect, there
was no boyhood in him. A town-bred scholar, a straight
constitutional upon a clean road was his wildest dream of exercise;
he had never mounted a horse, did not know a chicken from a
partridge, except on the table, was too short-sighted for pictures,
and esteemed no music except Gregorians.
The two youths were far more alive to his deficiencies than to his
endowments: Algernon contemned him for being a book-seller's son,
with nothing to live on but his fellowship and curacy, and Gilbert
looked down on his ignorance of every matter of common life, and
excessive bashfulness.
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