LITEKAET AND DOMESTIC LIFE. 327 



have destroyed interest and affection ; but with him patience was 

 willing to be torn to tatters, and respect driven to the last verge. 

 Still Thomas He Quincey held the place his intellectual greatness 

 had at first taken possession of. Wilson loved him to the last, and 

 better than any man he understood him. In the expansiveness of 

 his own heart, he made allowances for faults which experience 

 taught him were the growth of circumstance. It may seem strange 

 that men so opposite in character were allied to each other by the 

 bonds of friendship ; but I think that all experience shows that 

 sympathy, not similarity, draws men to one another in that sacred 

 relation. 



I remember his coming to Gloucester Place one stormy night. 

 He remained hour after hour, in vain expectation that the waters 

 would assuage aud the hurly-burly cease. There was nothing for it 

 but that our visitor should remain all night. The Professor ordered 

 a room to be prepared for him, and they found each other such good 

 company that this accidental detention was prolonged, without fur- 

 ther difficulty, for the greater part of a year. During this visit 

 some of his eccentricities did not escape observation. For exam- 

 ple, he rarely appeared at the family meals, preferring to dine in his 

 own room at his own hour, not unfrequently turning night into day. 

 His tastes were very simple, though a little troublesome, at least to 

 the servant who prepared his repast. Coffee, boiled rice and milk, 

 and a piece of mutton from the loin, were the materials that invari- 

 ably formed his diet. The cook, who had an audience with him 

 daily, received her instructions in silent awe, quite overpowered by 

 his manner ; for, had he been addressing a duchess, he could scarcely 

 have spoken with more deference. He would couch his request in 

 such terms as these : — " Owing to dyspepsia afflicting my system, 

 and the possibility of any additional disarrangement of the stomach 

 taking place, consequences incalculably distressing would arise, so 

 much so indeed as to increase nervous irritation, and prevent me 

 from attending to matters of overwhelming importance, if you do 

 not remember to cut the mutton in a diagonal rather than in a lon- 

 gitudinal form." The cook— a Scotchwoman — had great rever- 

 ence for Mr. He Quincey as a man of genius ; but, after one of 

 these interviews, her patience was pretty well exhausted, and she 

 would say, " Weel, I never heard the like o' that in a' my days ; 

 the bodie has an awfu' sieht o' words. If it had been my ain mais- 



