a compliment.

His forehead was very broad; his height was five feet eleven inches; his
complexion rather dark, the eyebrows large and arched, the eye well
shaped and dark brown, the mouth somewhat prominent, muscular, and very
variously expressive, the chin small in proportion to the upper features
of his face. He always, while in Keswick, wore a cap in his walks, and
partly from habit, partly from the make of his head and shoulders, we
never thought he looked well or like himself in a hat. He was of a very
spare frame, but of great activity, and not showing any appearance of a
weak constitution.

My father's countenance, like his character, seems to have softened down
from a certain wildness of expression to a more sober and thoughtful
cast; and many thought him a handsomer man in age than in youth; his eye
retaining always its brilliancy, and his countenance its play of
expression.

The reader will remember his Republican independency when an
under-graduate at Oxford, in rebelling against the supremacy of the
college barber. Though he did not continue to let his hair hang down on
his shoulders according to the whim of his youthful days, yet he always
wore a greater quantity than is usual; and once, on his arrival in town,
Chantrey's first greetings to him were accompanied with an injunction to
go and get his hair cut. When I first remember it, it was turning from a
rich brown to the steel shade, whence it rapidly became almost snowy
white, losing none of its remarkable thickness, and clustering in
abundant curls over his massive brow.

For the following remarks on his general bearing and habits of
conversation I am indebted to a friend:

"The characteristics of his manner, as of his appearance, were lightness
and strength, an easy and happy composure as the accustomed mood, with
much mobility at the same time, so that he could be readily excited into
any degree of animation in discourse, speaking, if the subject moved him
much, with extraordinary fire and force, though always in light, laconic
sentences. When so moved, the fingers of his right hand often rested
against his mouth, and quivered through nervous susceptibility. But,
excitable as he was in conversation, he was never angry or irritable;
nor can there be any greater mistake concerning him than that into which
some persons have fallen, when they have inferred, from the fiery
vehemence with which he could give utterance to moral anger in verse or
prose