every fantastic gnarled pollard he halted to gaze; his eye followed the
lark soaring up from his feet; when a fresher air came from the hill-top
his nostrils dilated, as if voluptuously to inhale its delight. My
father, with all his learning, and though his study had been in the
stores of all language, was very rarely eloquent. The Captain had a
glow and a passion in his words which, what with his deep, tremulous
voice and animated gestures, gave something poetic to half of what he
uttered. In every sentence of Roland's, in every tone of his voice and
every play of his face, there was some outbreak of pride; but unless you
set him on his hobby of that great ancestor the printer, my father had
not as much pride as a homeeopathist could have put into a globule. He
was not proud even of not being proud. Chafe all his feathers, and
still you could rouse but the dove. My father was slow and mild, my
uncle quick and fiery; my father reasoned, my uncle imagined; my father
was very seldom wrong, my uncle never quite in the right; but, as my
father once said of him, "Roland beats about the bush till he sends out
the very bird that we went to search for. He is never in the wrong
without suggesting to us what is the right." All in my uncle was stern,
rough, and angular; all in my father was sweet, polished, and rounded
into a natural grace. My uncle's character cast out a multiplicity of
shadows, like a Gothic pile in a northern sky. My father stood serene
in the light, like a Greek temple at mid-day in a southern clime. Their
persons corresponded with their natures. My uncle's high, aquiline
features, bronzed hue, rapid fire of eye, and upper lip that always
quivered, were a notable contrast to my father's delicate profile,
quiet, abstracted gaze, and the steady sweetness that rested on his
musing smile. Roland's forehead was singularly high, and rose to a peak
in the summit where phrenologists place the organ of veneration; but it
was narrow, and deeply furrowed. Augustine's might be as high, but then
soft, silky hair waved carelessly over it, concealing its height, but