CHAP. XII.] PERSONAL TRAITS. 367 



of 1856, after his father's death, and in the crisis of 

 his life at Aberdeen (1857-8). 



This graver tone by no means checked the play- 

 ful impulses that burst forth from time to time in 

 sparkling jeux d'esprits. It rather fledged his arrows, 

 while it loaded them, giving them a steadier aim, 

 so that his lightest effusions carried an unsuspected 

 weight of meaning. His wit was never more brilliant, 

 more incisive, or (it may be added) more perfectly 

 good-humoured, than in the verses on Professor Cay- 

 ley's portrait, and the " Notes of the President's 

 Address." He found time also to indulge his old 

 taste for reading and writing in cypher, and thus, on 

 one occasion, considerably disconcerted a contributor 

 to the second column of the Times. 



His outward appearance in these later years has 

 been well described by one who saw him first in 

 1866 :- 



A man of middle height, with frame strongly knit, and 



undergraduate days, may be seen in a letter (not given above) of 



26th March 1852 : ^. 2 Q. 



" A. was sent for by telegraph to his sister : he found her past re- 

 covery, and she is since dead. The family is large, and till now was 

 entire, so that the grief is great and new. 



" The attributes of man, as one of a family, seem to be more highly 

 developed in large families. The pronoun ' we ' acquires a peculiar 

 significance. The family man has an idea of a living home, to which 

 he can in imagination retreat, and which gives him a steadiness and 

 force not his own. He is one member of a naturally constituted 

 society ; he has protected his juniors and been protected by his seniors ; 

 and now he has the consciousness that he is but one of the arrows in 

 the quiver of the Mighty, and that it is the interest of others as well 

 as his own that he should succeed." 



