KINDNESS, AND SYMPATHIES 249 



irreverent or profane jest or innuendo, and this not 

 because he would have lectured or even rebuked him. 

 It was simply the reverent purity of his presence, if I 

 may so speak. 



" Then, in his intercourse with the humblest of his 

 social inferiors, he was unaffected and simple, without 

 being patronising, and won not only their respect, but 

 their affection. I remember his noticing a sickly- 

 looking young woman, who used to work in Porter's 

 bookbinding shop, and being told that it was a case of 

 incipient consumption, unasked, he paid for her voyage 

 to Australia, which, I believe, restored her to health. 

 This is only one instance of many ; yet, with an utter 

 absence of hauteur, no one could ever take a liberty 

 with him. 



"As a naturalist, he was a typical field naturalist* 

 His powers of observation were great. Nothing ever 

 escaped him, however minute, in the habits and ways of 

 animals, especially of birds, and he could describe them. 

 He exemplified his favourite saying, that, in spite of all 

 that has been written, accurate personal observation will 

 always be of infinite value. 



" He modestly deprecated the idea of his being a 

 scientific naturalist, but he was really far more so than 

 he would allow, though his love for nature was far too 

 fresh to allow him to enter into the wrangles about 

 nomenclature and such dry-as-dust topics, by which 

 many try to bring themselves into notice. But for all 



