nd the rest of the time was given up to
reading, to visiting, and to the theatre, he being particularly attracted
to the latter form of amusement. His reading was as omnivorous as that of
Lord Macaulay. Metaphysics, poetry, novels, were all grist for his mill.
This general interest saved him from becoming that greatest of all bores,
a man with but one idea.

He was as cold in his conduct as in his philosophy. He maintained in the
various relations of life an imperturbable calmness. But it was not that
of a Goethe, who knows how to harmonize passion and intellect; it was
that of a man in whom the former is an unknown quantity. He was always
methodical in his work. Great as his interest in his subject might be,
his ardor was held within bounds. There were no long vigils spent
wrestling with thought, or days and weeks passed alone and locked in his
study that nothing might interfere with the flow of ideas, unless, as
happened occasionally, he was working against time. He wrote from nine
till one, and then, when he found his brain confused by this amount of
labor, he readily reduced the number of his working hours. Literary
composition was undertaken by him with the same placidity with which
another man might devote himself to book-keeping. His moral code was
characterized by the same cool calculation. He had early decided that
usefulness to his fellow-creatures was the only thing which made life
worth living. It is doubtful whether any other human being would have set
about fulfilling this object as he did. He writes of himself:--

"No man could be more desirous than I was of adopting a practice
conformable to my principles, as far as I could do so without
affording reasonable ground of offence to any other person. I was
anxious not to spend a penny on myself which I did not imagine
calculated to render me a more capable servant of the public; and
as I was averse to the expenditure of money, so I was not inclined
to earn it but in small portions. I considered the disbursement of
money for the benefit of others as a very difficult problem, which
he who has the possession of it is bound to solve in the best
manner he can, but which affords small encouragement to any one to
acquire it who has it not. The plan, therefore, I resolved on was
leisure,--a leisure to be employed in deliberate composition, and
in the pursuit of such attainments as afforded me the most