his was a slender dart, and rebounded easily to the hand.  I like the scintillating, arrowy wit far better than broad, genial humor.  The light metallic touch pleases me.  When wit appears as fun and jollity, she wears a little of the Silenus air;—­the Mercurial is what I like.

’In later days,—­for my intimacy with him lasted many years,—­he became the feeder of my intellect.  He delighted to ransack the history of a nation, of an art or a science, and bring to me all the particulars.  Telling them fixed them in his own memory, which was the most tenacious and ready I have ever known; he enjoyed my clear perception as to their relative value, and I classified them in my own way.  As he was omnivorous, and of great mental activity, while my mind was intense, though rapid in its movements, and could only give itself to a few things of its own accord, I traversed on the wings of his effort large demesnes that would otherwise have remained quite unknown to me.  They were not, indeed, seen to the same profit as my own province, whose tillage I knew, and whose fruits were the answer to my desire; but the fact of seeing them at all gave a largeness to my view, and a candor to my judgment.  I could not be ignorant how much there was I did not know, nor leave out of sight the many sides to every question, while, by the law of affinity, I chose my own.

’Lytton was not loved by any one.  He was not positively hated, or disliked; for there was nothing which the general mind could take firm hold of enough for such feelings.  Cold, intangible, he was to play across the life of others.  A momentary resentment was sometimes felt at a presence which would not mingle with theirs; his scrutiny, though not hostile, was recognized as unfeeling and impertinent, and his mirth unsettled all objects from their foundations.  But he was soon forgiven and forgotten.  Hearts went not forth to war against or to seek one who was a mere experimentalist and observer in existence.  For myself, I did not love, perhaps, but was attached to him, and the attachment grew steadily, for it was founded, not on what I wanted of him, but on his truth to himself.  His existence was a real one; he was not without a pathetic feeling of his wants, but was never tempted to supply them by imitating the properties of any other character.  He accepted the law of his being, and never violated it.  This is next best to the nobleness which transcends it.  I did not disapprove, even when I disliked, his acts.

’Amadin, my other companion, was as slow and deep of feeling, as Lytton was brilliant, versatile, and cold.  His temperament was generally grave, even to apparent dulness; his eye gave little light, but a slow fire burned in its depths.  His was a character not to be revealed to himself, or others, except by the important occasions of life.  Though every day, no doubt, deepened and enriched him, it brought little that he could show or recall.  But when his soul,