Repentance comes to him at last,
because conscience has never in him been entirely overlaid and crushed.
It comes when the whirlwind of anguish has swept over him, scattered all
the flimsy mists of self-excuse in which self-love had sought to veil his
wrong-doing, and bowed him to the dust; but who shall estimate the
remediless and everlasting loss already sustained?
We have spoken of Captain Wybrow as the prototype of Arthur. He is so in
respect of both being swayed by that vital sin of self-pleasing to which
all wrong-doing ultimately refers itself; but that in Arthur the
corruption of life at its source is not complete, is shown throughout the
whole story. The very form of action which self-love assumes in him,
tells that self though dominant is not yet supreme. It refers itself to
others. It absolutely requires human sympathy. So long as the man lives
to some extent in the opinion and affections of his brother men,--so long
as he is even uncomfortable under the sense of being shut out from these
otherwise than as the being so shall affect his own _interests_,--we may
be quite sure he is not wholly lost.
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