Not the less, however, though with a tremulous enjoyment, did he feel the occasional relief of looking at the universe through the medium of another kind of intellect than those with which he habitually held converse. In no state of society would he have been what is called a man of liberal views it would always be essential to his peace to feel the pressure of a faith about him, supporting, while it confined him within its iron framework. Dimmesdale was a true priest, a true religionist, with the reverential sentiment largely developed, and an order of mind that impelled itself powerfully along the track of a creed, and wore its passage continually deeper with the lapse of time. In truth, he was startled, if not shocked, to find this attribute in the physician. There was a fascination for the minister in the company of the man of science, in whom he recognised an intellectual cultivation of no moderate depth or scope together with a range and freedom of ideas, that he would have vainly looked for among the members of his own profession. Often, likewise, one was the guest of the other in his place of study and retirement. For the sake of the minister's health, and to enable the leech to gather plants with healing balm in them, they took long walks on the sea-shore, or in the forest mingling various walks with the splash and murmur of the waves, and the solemn wind-anthem among the tree-tops. As not only the disease interested the physician, but he was strongly moved to look into the character and qualities of the patient, these two men, so different in age, came gradually to spend much time together. In this manner, the mysterious old Roger Chillingworth became the medical adviser of the Reverend Mr.
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