Colonel de Haldimar was neither; but, on the
contrary, what is understood in worldly parlance and the
generally received acceptation of the terms, a man of
strict integrity and honour, as well as of the most
undisputed courage. Still, he was a severe and a haughty
man,--one whose military education had been based on the
principles of the old school--and to whom the command of
a regiment afforded a field for the exercise of an orthodox
despotism, that could not be passed over without the
immolation of many a victim on its rugged surface. Without
ever having possessed any thing like acute feeling, his
heart, as nature had formed it, was moulded to receive
the ordinary impressions of humanity; and had he been
doomed to move in the sphere of private life, if he had
not been distinguished by any remarkable sensibilities,
he would not, in all probability, have been conspicuous
for any extraordinary cruelties. Sent into the army,
however, at an early age, and with a blood not remarkable
for its mercurial aptitudes, he had calmly and deliberately
imbibed all the starched theories and standard prejudices
which a mind by no means naturally gifted was but too well
predisposed to receive; and he was among the number of
those (many of whom are indigenous to our soil even at the
present day) who look down from a rank obtained, upon that
which has been just quitted, with a contempt, and coldness,
and consciousness of elevation, commensurate only with the
respect paid to those still above them, and which it belongs
only to the little-minded to indulge in.
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