whose eagerness to learn exceeded even his eagerness to teach, and who rarely went out without a book in his pocket.
The gloomy seclusion in which they lived—his health, which rendered those field sports that must have thrown him among young companions unattractive—all fostered the dreaming habits of his mind. He would pass hours under the shade of one old favourite cedar, whose vast boughs required a storm to move them, and through whose thick foliage the sunbeams never pierced; or whole evenings would pass away while he paced the chestnut avenue, ancient as those days when the earls of Etheringhame wore belt and spur, and rode beneath those trees with five hundred armed vassals in their train. There he dreamed of life—those dreams which so unfit the visionary for action, which make the real world so distasteful when measured by that within.
Algernon[1] was a poet in all but expression: that deep love of beauty—that susceptibility to external impressions—that fancy which, like the face we love, invests all things it looks on with a grace not their own—that intense feeling which makes so much its own pain and pleasure—all these were his: it were well had
- ↑ ditto
