Julian could not help observing that, during the last few days, Kennedy’s spirits had suffered a change. His old mirth came only in fitful bursts, and he was often moody and silent; but Julian attributed it to anxiety for the result of the examination, and doubt whether he should be allowed by his father to make one of the long-anticipated party in the foreign tour.
Kennedy dared not admit any one into his confidence, but the last evening, before they went down, he turned the conversation, as he sat at tea in Owen’s room, to the topic of character, and the faults of great men, and the aberrations of the good.
“Tell me, Owen,” he said, “as you’re a philosopher—tell me what difference the faults of good men make in our estimate of them?”
“In our real estimate,” said Owen, “I fancy we often adopt, half unconsciously, the maxim, that ‘the king can do no wrong’—that the true hero is all heroic.”
“Yes,” said Kennedy; “but when some one calls your attention to the fact of their failings, and makes you look at them—what then?”
“Why, in nine cases out of ten the faults are grossly exaggerated and misrepresented, and I should try to prove that such is the fact; and for the rest,—why, no man is perfect.”
“You shirk the question, though,” said Lillyston; “for you have to make very tremendous allowance indeed for some of the very best of men.”
As, for instance?
“As, for instance, king David.”
“Oh, don’t take Scripture instances,” said Suton, an excellent fellow whom they all liked, though he took very different views of things from their own.