His features were in fine proportion, though perhaps too delicate.
Perhaps they were a little too small to be properly beautiful. When first
I saw a likeness of the poet Shelley, I called out "My uncle!" and
immediately began to see differences. He wore a small but long moustache,
brushed away from his mouth; and over it his eyes looked large. They were
of a clear gray, and very gentle. I know from the testimony of others,
that I was right in imagining him a really learned man. That small head
of his contained more and better than many a larger head of greater note.
He was constantly reading--that is, when not thinking, or giving me the
lessons which make me now thank him for half my conscious soul.

Reading or writing or thinking, he made me always welcome to share his
room with him; but he seldom took me out walking. He was by no means
regular in his habits--regarded neither times nor seasons--went and came
like a bird. His hour for going out was unknown to himself, was seldom
two days together the same. He would rise up suddenly, even in the middle
of a lesson--he always called it "a lesson together"--and without a word
walk from the room and the house. I had soon observed that in gloomy
weather he went out often, in the sunshine seldom.

The house had a large garden, of a very old-fashioned sort, such a place
for the charm of both glory and gloom as I have never seen elsewhere. I
have had other eyes opened within me to deeper beauties than I saw in
that garden then; my remembrance of it is none the less of an enchanted
ground. But my uncle never walked in it. When he walked, it was always
out on the moor he went, and what time he would return no one ever knew.
His meals were uninteresting to him--no concern to any one but Martha,
who never uttered a word of impatience, and seldom a word of anxiety. At
whatever hour of the day he went, it was almost always night when he came