feelings seemed to be a kind of spiritual indelicacy. To encourage
children to use the conventional phrases could only stimulate to
unreality or actual hypocrisy. He recognised, indeed, the duty of
impressing upon us his own convictions, but he spoke only when speaking
was a duty. He read prayers daily in his family, and used to expound a
few verses of the Bible with characteristic unction. In earlier days I
find him accusing himself of a tendency to address 'homiletical
epistles' to his nearest connections; but he scrupulously kept such
addresses for some adequate occasion in his children's lives. We were,
indeed, fully aware, from a very early age, of his feelings, and could
not but be continuously conscious that we were under the eye of a father
governed by the loftiest and purest motives, and devoting himself
without stint to what he regarded as his duty. He was a living
'categorical imperative.' 'Did you ever know your father do a thing
because it was pleasant?' was a question put to my brother, when he was
a small boy, by his mother. She has apparently recorded it for the sake
of the childish answer: 'Yes, once--when he married you.' But we were
always conscious of the force of the tacit appeal.

I must not give the impression that he showed himself a stern parent. I
remember that when his first grandchild was born, I was struck by the
fact that he was the most skilful person in the family at playing with
the baby. Once, when some friends upon whom he was calling happened to
be just going out, he said, 'Leave me the baby and I shall be quite
happy.' Several little fragments of letters with doggerel rhymes and
anecdotes suited for children recall his playfulness with infants, and
as we grew up, although we learnt to regard him with a certain awe, he
conversed with us most freely, and discoursed upon politics, history,
and literature, and his personal recollections, as if we had been his
equals, though, of course, with a width of knowledge altogether beyond
our own. The risk of giving pain to a 'skinless' man was all that could
cause any reserve between us; but a downright outspoken boy like my
brother soon acquired and enjoyed a position on the most affectionate
terms of familiarity. We knew that he loved us; that his character was
not only pure but chivalrous; and that intellectually he was a most
capable guide into the most delightful pastures.

I will conclude by a word or two upon his physical characteristics