The distinction of holding loftier opinions than his neighbors was the ground of his advocacy of them.

Something of the beauty of the truth he must have seen--who does not ?--else he could not have been thus moved at all; but he had never denied himself even a whim for the carrying out of one of his ideas; he had never set himself to be better; and the whole mountain-chain, therefore, of his notions sank and sank, until at length their loftiest peak was the maxim, _Honesty is the best policy_--a maxim which, true enough in fact, will no more make a man honest than the economic aphorism, _The supply equals the demand_, will teach him the niceties of social duty.

Whoever makes policy the ground of his honesty will discover more and more exceptions to the rule.

The career, therefore, of Turnbull of the high notions had been a gradual descent to the level of his present dishonesty and vulgarity; nothing is so vulgarizing as dishonesty.

I do not care to follow the history of any man downward.