He was not ill-fitted to be the head and
representative of a community which owed its origin and
progress, and its present state of development, not to the
impulses of youth, but to the stern and tempered energies of
manhood and the sombre sagacity of age; accomplishing so much,
precisely because it imagined and hoped so little. The other
eminent characters by whom the chief ruler was surrounded were
distinguished by a dignity of mien, belonging to a period when
the forms of authority were felt to possess the sacredness of
Divine institutions. They were, doubtless, good men, just and
sage. But, out of the whole human family, it would not have been
easy to select the same number of wise and virtuous persons, who
should be less capable of sitting in judgment on an erring
woman's heart, and disentangling its mesh of good and evil, than
the sages of rigid aspect towards whom Hester Prynne now turned
her face. She seemed conscious, indeed, that whatever sympathy
she might expect lay in the larger and warmer heart of the
multitude; for, as she lifted her eyes towards the balcony, the
unhappy woman grew pale, and trembled.
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