upon how it must feel to move about freely, to walk and run.  He had also lost much of his early shyness, and ceased to feel any actual dread of being looked at.  His chief difficulty was the practical one of locomotion, and this for him was solved much easier than if he had been a man of limited means.  By some expenditure of money, and by a good deal of ingenious contrivance, he managed to be taken about as easily in Edinburg as at Cairnforth; was present at church and law-court, theatre and concert-room, and at many a pleasant reunion of pleasant people every where.

For in his heart Lord Cairnforth rather liked society.  To him, whose external resources were so limited, who could in truth do nothing for his own amusement but read, social enjoyments were very valuable.  He took pleasure in watching the encounter of keen wits, the talk of clever conversationalists.  His own talent in that line was not small, though he seldom used it in large circles; but with two or three only about him, the treasures of his well-stored mind came out often very brilliantly.  Then he was so alive to all that was passing in the world outside, and took as keen an interest in politics, social ethics, and schemes of philanthropy as if he himself had been like other men, instead of being condemned (or exalted—­which shall we say?  Dis aliter visum!) to a destiny of such solemn and awful isolation.

Yet he never put forward his affliction so as to make it painful to those around him.  Many, in the generation now nearly passed away, long and tenderly remembered the little figure, placed motionless in the centre of a brilliant circle—­all clever men and charming women—­ yet of whose notice the cleverest and most charming were always proud.  Not because he was an earl—­nobility was plentiful enough at Edinburg then—­but because he was himself.  It was a pleasure just to sit beside him, and to meet his pleasantness with cheerful chat, gay banter, or affectionate earnestness.

For every body loved him.  Women, of course, did; they could not help it; but men were drawn to him likewise, with the sort of reverential tenderness that they would feel toward a suffering child or woman—­ and something more—­intense respect.  His high sense of honor, his true manliness, attracted the best of all the notabilities then constituting that brilliant set; and there was not one of them worth having for a friend at all who was not, in greater or less degree, the friend of the Earl of Cairnforth.

But there was another side of his Edinburg life which did not appear till long after he had quitted Modern Athens forever—­nor even then fully; not until he had passed quite away from the comments of this mortal world.  Then, many a struggling author, or worn-out professional man, to whom life was all up-hill, or to whom sudden misfortune had made the handful of “siller” (i.e. “silver”) a matter of absolute salvation to both body and soul—­scores