f character and conduct. The first object of life was to
realize one's best self, and this endeavour required not merely
cleverness or information: even genius would not of itself suffice;
still less would adherence to any particular body of opinions. If a man
was _dis-respectable_, "not even the merit of not being a Philistine
could make up for it." Character issuing in Conduct--this was the true
culture which we must all ensue, if by any means we were to attain to
our predestined perfection; and, if that were once secured, all the
rest--talent, fame, influence, length of days, worldly
prosperity--mattered little. Thus he wrote of his friend Edward
Quillinan--

I saw him sensitive in frame,
I knew his spirits low:
And wish'd him health, success, and fame--
I do not wish it now.

For these are all their own reward,
And leave no good behind;
They try us, oftenest make us hard,
Less modest, pure, and kind.

Alas! yet to the suffering man,
In this his mortal state,
Friends could not give what fortune can--
Health, ease, a heart elate.

But he is now by fortune foil'd
No more; and we retain
The memory of a man unspoil'd,
Sweet, generous, and humane--

With all the fortunate have not,
With gentle voice and brow.
--Alive, we would have changed his lot,
We would not change it now.

When his eldest boy died he wrote to a friend: "He is gone--and all the
absorption in one's own occupations which prevented one giving to him
more than moments, all one's occasional impatience, all one's taking his
ailments as a matter of course, come back upon one as something
inconceivable and inhuman. And his mother, who has nothing of all this
to reproach herself with, who was everything to him and would have given
herself for him, has lost the occupation of sixteen years, and has to
begin life over again. The one endless comfort to us is the thought of
the _sweet, firm, sterling character_ which the darling child developed
in and by all his sufferings and privations. Of that we can think and
think."

When his second boy died he said that his "deepest feeling" was best
expressed by his own _Dejaneira_--

But him, on whom, in the prime
Of life, with vigour undimm'd,
With unspent mind, and a soul
_Unworn, undebased, undecay'd_,
Mournfully grating, the gates
Of the city of death have for ever closed--