well as a
determined assertor of its own political maxims. The common idea
regarding its chief conductor represented him as a man of
extraordinary sharpness, alternating between epigrammatic flippancy
and democratic rigour. Gentle and refined feeling would certainly
never have been attributed to him. It will now be found that he was at
all times of his life a man of genial spirit towards the entire circle
of his fellow-creatures--that his leading tastes were for poetry and
the beautiful in external nature, particularly fine scenery--that he
revelled in the home affections, and was continually saying the
softest and kindest things to all about him--a lamb, in short, while
thought a lion. The local circle in which he lived was somewhat
limited and exclusive, partly, perhaps, in consequence of having been
early shut in upon itself by its dissent from the mass of society on
most public questions; but in this circle Jeffrey was adored by men,
women, and children alike, on account of his extreme kindliness of
disposition. He was almost, to a ridiculous degree, dependent on the
love of his friends; and the terms in which he addresses some of them,
particularly ladies, sound odd in this commonsense world. Thus, the
wife of one of his friends is, 'My sweet, gentle, and long-suffering
Sophia.' He pours out his very heart to his correspondents, and with
an effect which would reconcile to him the most irascible author he
ever scarified. Thus, to his daughter, who had just left him with her
husband:--'I happened to go up stairs, and passing into our room, saw
the door open of that little one where _you_ used to sleep, and the
very bed waiting there for you, so silent and desolate, that all the
love, and the _miss_ of you, which fell so sadly on my heart the first
night of your desertion, came back upon it so heavily and darkly, that
I was obliged to shut myself in, and cry over the recollection, as if
all the interval had been annihilated, and that loss and sorrow were
still fresh and unsubdued before me; and though the fit went off
before long, I feel still that I must vent my heart by telling you of
it, and therefore sit down now to write all this to you, and get rid
of my feelings, that would otherwise be more likely to haunt my vigils
of the night.' Thus, on the death of a sister in his early days:--'A
very heavy blow upon us all, and much more so on me than I had
believed possible. The habit of seeing her almost every day, and o