Daniel with singular exactness. But even so, it was the work of a
man, I think, who had suffered the sorrows of which he wrote. Let
me try to disentangle what manner of man he was.

He was young and humble; he was rich, or had opportunities of
becoming so; he was an exile, or lived in an uncongenial society;
he was the member of a court where he was derided, disliked,
slandered, plotted against, and even persecuted. We can clearly
discern his own character. He was timid, and yet ambitious; he was
tempted to use deceit and hypocrisy, to acquiesce in the tone about
him; he was inclined to be covetous; he had sinned, and had learnt
something of holiness from his fall; he was given to solitude and
prayer. He was sensitive, and his sorrows had affected his health;
he was sleepless, and had lost the bloom of his youth.

All this and more we can read of him; but what is the saddest touch
of all is the isolation in which he lived. There is not a word to
show that he met with any sympathy; indeed the misunderstanding,
whatever it was, that overshadowed him, had driven acquaintances,
friends, and lovers away from him; and yet his tender confidence in
God never fails; he feels that in his passionate worship of virtue
and truth, his intense love of purity and justice, he has got a
treasure which is more to him than riches or honour, or even than
human love. He speaks as though this passion for holiness had been
the very thing that had cost him so dear, and that exposed him to
derision and dislike. Perhaps he had refused to fall in with some
customary form of evil, and his resistance to temptation had led
him to be regarded as a precisian and a saint? I have little doubt
myself that this was so. He speaks as one might speak who had been
so smitten with the desire for purity and rightness of life, that