, above all, more lenient to ordinary people.
While averse, perhaps too severely averse, to whatever was luxurious
or frivolous in undergraduate life, he had the warmest interest in,
and the strongest sympathy for, the humbler classes. Loving social
equality, and filled with a sense of the dignity of simple human
nature, he liked to meet farmers and tradespeople on their own level,
and knew how to do so without seeming to condescend; indeed
nothing pleased him better, than when they addressed him as one of
themselves, the manner of his talk to them, as well as the extreme
plainness of his dress, conducing to such mistakes. The belief in
the duty of approaching the people directly and getting them to
think and to form and express their own views in their own way was
at the root of all his political doctrines.

Though apt to be silent in general company, no one could be more
agreeable when you were alone with him. We used to say of him--and his
seniors said the same--that one never talked to him without carrying
away something to ponder over. On everything he said or wrote there
was stamped the impress of a strong individuality, a mind that thought
for itself, a character ruggedly original, wherein grimness was
mingled with humour, and practical shrewdness with a love for abstract
speculation. His independence appeared even in the way he pursued his
studies. With abilities of the highest order, he cared comparatively
little for the distinctions which the University offers; choosing
rather to follow out his own line of reading in the way he judged
permanently useful than to devote himself to the pursuit of honours
and prizes.

He was constitutionally lethargic, found it hard to rouse himself to
exertion, and was apt to let himself be driven to the last moment in
finishing a piece of work. There was a rule in his College that an
essay should be given in every Friday evening. His was, to the great
annoyance of the dons, never ready till Saturday. But when it did go
in, it was the weightiest and most thoughtful, as well as the most
eloquent, that the College produced. This indolence had one good
result. It disposed him to brood over subjects, while others were
running quickly through many books and getting up subjects for
examination. It contributed to that depth and systematic quality which
struck us in his thinking, and made him seem mature beside even the
ablest of his contemporaries. When others were being, so to speak,