Who was Sir Matthew Holworthy, that his name is a household
word on the lips of thousands of scholars, and will be centuries hence,
as that of Walter de Merton, dead six hundred years ago, is to-day at
Oxford? Who was Mistress Holden, that she should be blessed among women
by having her name spoken gratefully and the little edifice she caused to
be erected preserved as her monument from generation to generation? All
these possibilities, the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, the
pride of life; the tears of grateful orphans by the gallon; the prayers
of Westminster Assembly's Catechism divines by the thousand; the masses
of priests by the century;--all these things, and more if more there be
that the imagination of a lover of gold is likely to range over, the
miser hears and sees and feels and hugs and enjoys as he paddles with his
lean hands among the sliding, shining, ringing, innocent-looking bits of
yellow metal, toying with them as the lion-tamer handles the great
carnivorous monster, whose might and whose terrors are child's play to
the latent forces and power of harm-doing of the glittering counters
played with in the great game between angels and devils.
I have seen a good deal of misers, and I think I understand them as well
as most persons do. But the Capitalist's economy in rags and his
liberality to the young doctor are very oddly contrasted with each other.
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