The tide of generous feeling, the holy
sympathies, still common to our fallen nature, freeze beneath its torpid
influence. The heart becomes stone--the eyes blinded to all that once
awakened the soul to admiration and delight. He that has placed the idol
of gold upon the pure altar of nature has debased his own, and sinks
below the brute, whose actions are guided by a higher instinct, the
simple law of necessity.
The love of accumulating had been a prominent feature of Mark's
character from his earliest years; but there was a time when it had not
been his ruling passion. Love, hatred, and revenge, had alternately
swayed his breast, and formed the main-spring of his actions. He had
loved and mistrusted, had betrayed and destroyed the victim of his
jealous regard; yet his hatred remained unextinguished--his revenge
ungratified. The malice of envy and the gnawings of disappointed vanity
were now concealed beneath the sullen apathy of age; but the spark
slumbered in the grey ashes, although the heart had out-lived its fires.
To make his character more intelligible it will be necessary to trace
his history from the first page of his life.
Born heir to a vast inheritance, Mark Hurdlestone had not a solitary
excuse to offer for his avarice. His father had improved the old
paternal estate, and trebled its original value; and shared, in no
common degree, the parsimonious disposition of his son.
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