Appendix II.") 



the library, with a single candle, thinking that every one IKK! 

 long since retired, and having quite forgotten in the perfectly 

 familiar appearance of the room, that the little change had 

 been made, when suddenly one of the book-cases flew out 

 of the wall, turning upon noiseless hinges, and, out of the 

 perfect darkness behind, Downing darted into the room, 

 while I sat staring like a benighted guest in the Castle of 

 Otranto. The moment, the place, and the circumstance, 

 were entirely harmonious with my impression of the man. 



Thus, although, upon the bright May morning, I had 

 crossed the river to see a man of transparent and simple 

 nature, a lover and poet of rural beauty, a man who had 

 travelled little, who had made his own way into polished 

 and cultivated social relations, as he did into everything 

 which he mastered, being altogether a self-made man- -I 

 found the courteous and accomplished gentleman, the quiet 

 man of the world, full of tact and easy dignity, in whom it 

 was easy to discover that lover and poet, though not in the 

 form anticipated. His exquisite regard for the details of 

 life, gave a completeness to his household, which is nowhere 

 surpassed. Fitness is the first element of beauty, and every 

 thing in his arrangement was appropriate. It was hard 

 not to sigh, when contemplating the beautiful results he 

 accomplished by taste and tact, and at comparatively 

 little pecuniary expense, to think of the sums elsewhere 

 squandered upon an insufficient and shallow splendor. Yet, 

 as beauty was, with Downing, life, and not luxury, although 

 he was, in feeling and by actual profession the Priest of 

 Beauty, he was never a Sybarite, never sentimental, never 

 weakened by the service. In the dispositions of most men 

 devoted to beauty, as artists and poets, there is a vein of 

 languor, a leaning to luxury, of which no trace was even 

 visible in him. His habits of life were singularly regular. 

 He used no tobacco, drank little wine, and was no gour- 

 mand. But he was no ascetic. He loved to entertain 

 Sybarites, poets, and the lovers of luxury: doubtless from 

 a consciousness that he had the magic of pleasing them more 

 than they had ever been pleased. He enjoyed the pleasure 



