§ 3. "Bind them about thy neck." I said, but now, that of an evil tree men never gathered good fruit. And the lesson we have finally to learn from Turner's life is broadly this, that all the power of it came of its mercy and sincerity; all the failure of it, from its want of faith. It has been asked of me, by several of his friends, that I should endeavor to do some justice to his character, mistaken wholly by the world. If my life is spared, I will. But that character is still, in many respects, inexplicable to me; the materials within my reach are imperfect; and my experience in the world not yet large enough to enable me to use them justly. His life is to be written by a biographer, who will, I believe, spare no pains in collecting the few scattered records which exist of a career so uneventful and secluded. I will not anticipate the conclusions of this writer; but if they appear to me just, will endeavor afterwards, so far as may be in my power, to confirm and illustrate them; and, if unjust, to show in what degree. § 4. Which, lest death or illness should forbid me, this only I declare now of what I know respecting Turner's character. Much of his mind and heart I do not know;--perhaps, never shall know. But this much I do; and if there is anything in the previous course of this work to warrant trust in me of any kind, let me be trusted when I tell you, that Turner had a heart as intensely kind, and as nobly true, as ever God gave to one of his creatures. I offer, as yet, no evidence in this matter. When I _do_ give it, it shall be sifted and clear. Only this one fact I now record joyfully and solemnly, that, having known Turner for ten years, and that during the period of his life when the brightest qualities of his mind were, in many respects, diminished, and when he was suffering most from the evil-speaking of the world, I never heard him say one depreciating word of living man, or man's work; I never saw him look an unkind or blameful look; I never knew him let pass, without some sorrowful remonstrance, or endeavor at mitigation, a blameful word spoken by another. Of no man but Turner, whom I have ever known, could I say this. And of this kindness and truth[2] came, I repeat, all his highest power. And all his failure and error, deep and strange, came of his faithlessness. Faithlessness, or despair, the despair which has been shown already (Vol. III., chap. xvi.) to be characteristic of this present century, and most sorrowfully manifested in its greatest men; but existing in an infinitely more fatal form in the lower and general mind, reacting upon those who ought to be its teachers.