learned how to be. Bennoch was not a university man, and lacked the
historical consciousness that Bright so assiduously cultivated; he
lived by feeling and intuition more than by deliberate intellectual
judgments. He was emotional; tears would start to his eyes at a touch
of pathos or pity, as readily as the laughter of a moment before. So
lovable, gallant, honest, boyish a man is seldom born into this modern
world-boyish as only the manliest men can be. He died thirty years
after the time I write of, the same fresh and ardent character as
ever, and loving and serving Hawthorne's children for Hawthorne's
sake. I shall have occasion to mention him hereafter; but I have dwelt
upon him here, both because he made it forever impossible for any one
who knew him well to do other than love the land which could breed
such a man, and because, for the American Hawthorne, he was as a
hospitable gate-way through which the England of his dreams and
imaginings was entered upon as a concrete and delightful reality.

With Bright and Bennoch on his right hand and on his left, then, my
father began his English experience. The two are frequently mentioned
in his English journals, and Bennoch figures as one of the subordinate
characters in the posthumous romance called Doctor Grimshawe's Secret.
It is but a sketch of him, however, and considerably modified from the
brilliant and energetic reality. Meanwhile the consul began to
accustom himself to the routine of the consulate, and his family,
leaving the sombre respectability of the Waterloo Hotel, moved, first,
to the hospitable boarding-house of Mrs. Blodgett, and afterwards to a
private dwelling in Rock Park, Rock Ferry, on the opposite side of the
Mersey, where we were destined to dwell for several years. They were
years full of events very trifling in themselves, but so utterly
different from everything American as to stamp themselves upon the
attention and the memory. It is the trifling things that tell, and