XXXIV MEMOIR. 



nothing to say, nothing should be said. He knew per- 

 fectly well that there is a time for discords, and a place 

 for departures from rule, and he understood them when 

 they came, which was peculiar and very lovely in a man 

 of so delicate a nervous organization. This led him to be 

 tolerant of all differences of opinion and action, and to be 

 sensitively wary of injuring the feelings of those from whom 

 he differed. He was thus scientific in the true sense. In 

 his department he was wise, and we find him writing from 

 Warwick Castle again, thus : " Whoever designed this 

 front, made up as it is of lofty towers and irregular walls, 

 must have been a poet as well as architect, for its com- 

 position and details struck me as having the proportions 

 and congruity of a fine scene in nature, which we feel is 

 not to be measured and defined by the ordinary rules of 

 art." 



His own home was his finest work. It was materially 

 beautiful, and spiritually bright with the purest lights of 

 affection. Its hospitality was gracious and graceful. It 

 consulted the taste, wishes, and habits of the guest, but 

 with such unobtrusiveness, that the favorite flower every 

 morning by the plate upon the breakfast-table, seemed to 

 have come there as naturally, in the family arrangements, 

 as the plate itself. He held his house as the steward of 

 his friends. His social genius never suffered a moment to 

 drag wearily by. No man was so necessarily devoted to 

 his own affairs, no host ever 'seemed so devoted to his 

 guests. Those guests were of the most agreeable kind, or, 

 at least, they seemed so in that house. Perhaps the inter- 

 preter of the House Beautiful, she who in the poet's 

 natural order was as " moonlight unto sunlight," was 

 the universal solvent. By day, there were always books, 

 conversation, driving, working, lying on the lawn, excur- 



