Obituary Notices. 
IX 
hearted mirth, yet he had no humour, I think, and could hardly 
tell a story without missing the point. He often startled pious folk 
by “ speaking unadvisedly with his lips,” and yet there was in his 
heart a profound reverence for a'll things good and holy. As I 
recall him to-day, I seem to be dealing with a lot of contradictory 
elements, which nevertheless were all sweetly harmonised in a 
generous and beautiful and loveable personality. A deft and 
nimble thinker, he was yet profoundly serious, and constantly 
brooding on the weightiest concerns. Careless of conventionality, 
and often startling ordinary folk, he was yet at bottom pious and 
touchingly reverent, loving Socrates and exalting Goethe, but 
never speaking of Jesus except, in a subdued tone, as “our 
Saviour.” To the last year of his life he was always ready to 
travel, in wintriest weather, a hundred miles, that he might speak 
or lecture to some poor villagers, to brighten an evening for them 
with wise discourse, not unmixed with a touch of juvenile fun. 
So his days were passed in various studies for his own more 
perfect culture, and various labours to benefit his fellow-men, and 
his sun went down amid tender regrets of affection and regard 
from all his countiymen whom he had loved so well, and who repaid 
him also with the love which was his due. 
