st time, an
impressive but rather disappointing man. He had shaved his beard,
keeping only his usual moustache; his face was very spare, with a
pallor that was not unhealthy. His hair, which was dark and lay in
masses, he wore generally rather long. He had got into the way, when
without his glasses, of half closing his eyes, because, as he said,
it did him so little good to keep them open, as it only served to
remind him of people's presence without giving him any more definite
idea of them. He could not, for instance, unassisted, see the play of
features on a face, and, for this reason, in all important interviews
he wore his glasses, giving three reasons.

1. Utilitarian--that he could see by his opponent's face what he was
driving at, and what effect his own remarks had on him.

2. Impressional--it gave a man an "adventitious consequence."

3. Precautional--"I show emotion quickest by the eye, and so,
generally speaking, do most people; some change colour very quick;
some reveal it in the mouth; but the sudden dilatation and
contraction of the eye, the expression it is capable of, make it on
the whole the safest guide.

"I trust the eye on the whole," he said; "guilelessness and an
unstained conscience are not really manifested either in feature or
deportment, but the eye will almost always tell you true."

His conversation, when he was in form, was, without exactly being
very brilliant, very inspiring. He had great freshness of expression,
and told very few stories, and those only in illustration, never on
their own merits. He was very [Greek: mnemonikos], or retentive--the
first requisite, says Plato, of a philosopher--and was consequently
well supplied with quotations and allusions, not slavishly repeated,
but worked naturally in. I do not mean that he passed for a good
talker by skilful plagiarizing, but I found that the wider my range
of reading became the more I appreciated his talk--drawn, as it was,
from all kinds of sources, and bringing with it that aroma of a
far-reaching mind, the _fascination_ that culture can bestow, the
feeling that, after all, everything is interesting, and that no
knowledge is unworthy of the attention of the philosopher.

He hardly ever discussed current politics, though he would argue on
political principles with the greatest keenness: neither had he
accurate historical knowledge, or antiquarian; but he enjoyed
listening to such talk. For the principles, the poetic aspect, o