roughly qualified to vindicate his cause. Each, constrained
by the stress of battle to analyze and expound his beliefs more
punctually than ever before, thereby convinced himself while leaving his
adversary undaunted; and, of course, both were right. For this world is
so constituted that two things incompatible in outward manifestation may
in their roots be one and the same, and equally appeal to the suffrages
of honest men. England and America are healthy and vigorous in
proportion as they differ from each other, and a morbid and vicious
tendency in either is noticeable the moment either begins to take a
leaf from the other's book. My father and Bright could not have been the
lifelong friends that they were had either of them yielded his point or
stooped to compromise.

Apart from political matters, and such social themes as were nearly
allied to them, the two friends had many points of agreement and
sympathy. Bright had from the first been an ardent and intelligent
admirer of the romancer's writings, and though they might often differ
in their estimates of individual works, they were in hearty accord as
to the principles which underlie all literature and art. Upon matters
relating to society, my father was more apt to accept theories which
Bright might propound than to permit of their being illustrated in his
own person; he would admit, for example, that a consul ought to mingle
socially with the people to whom he was accredited; but when it came
to getting him out to dinner, in evening dress and with a speech in
prospect, obstacles started up like the armed progeny of the Dragon's
Teeth. For, though no one enjoyed real society more than he did, he was
ardently averse from conversing as an official with persons between whom
and himself as a man there could be little sympathy. Almost as much,
too, did he dislike to meet the polite world merely on the basis of the
books that he had written, which his entertainers were bound to
praise whether or not they had read or comprehended them, and to whose
well-meant but inexpert eulogies he must constantly respond with the
threadbare and pathetic phrase, "I'm glad you liked it." Bright, of
course, insisted that fame and position carried obligations which must
be met, and he was constantly laying plots to inveigle or surprise
his friend into compliance. He often succeeded, but he failed quite as
frequently, so that, as a Mrs. Malaprop might have said, Hawthorne as
a social lion w