simple and hidden life. I must add the cardinal fact, that there was an
excellent wisdom in him, proper to a rare class of men, which showed him
the material world as a means and symbol. This discovery, which sometimes
yields to poets a certain casual and interrupted light, serving for the
ornament of their writing, was in him an unsleeping insight; and whatever
faults or obstructions of temperament might cloud it, he was not
disobedient to the heavenly vision. In his youth, he said, one day, "The
other world is all my art: my pencils will draw no other; my jack-knife
will cut nothing else; I do not use it as a means." This was the muse and
genius that ruled his opinions, conversation, studies, work, and course of
life. This made him a searching judge of men. At first glance he measured
his companion, and, though insensible to some fine traits of culture,
could very well report his weight and calibre. And this made the
impression of genius which his conversation often gave.

He understood the matter in hand at a glance, and saw the limitations
and poverty of those he talked with, so that nothing seemed concealed
from such terrible eyes. I have repeatedly known young men of sensibility
converted in a moment to the belief that this was the man they were in
search of, the man of men, who could tell them all they should do.
His own dealing with them was never affectionate, but superior,
didactic,--scorning their petty ways,--very slowly conceding, or not
conceding at all, the promise of his society at their houses, or even at
his own. "Would he not walk with them?" "He did not know. There was
nothing so important to him as his walk; he had no walks to throw away on
company." Visits were offered him from respectful parties, but he declined
them. Admiring friends offered to carry him at their own cost to the
Yellow-Stone River,--to the West Indies,--to South America. But though
nothing could be more grave or considered than his refusals, they remind
one in quite new relations of that fop Brummel's reply to the gentleman