and interest gleamed out upon his features, proving that there was light within him, and that it was only the outward medium of the intellectual lamp that obstructed the rays in their passage.  The closer you penetrated to the substance of his mind, the sounder it appeared.  When no longer called upon to speak or listen—­either of which operations cost him an evident effort—­his face would briefly subside into its former not uncheerful quietude.  It was not painful to behold this look; for, though dim, it had not the imbecility of decaying age.  The framework of his nature, originally strong and massive, was not yet crumpled into ruin.

To observe and define his character, however, under such disadvantages, was as difficult a task as to trace out and build up anew, in imagination, an old fortress, like Ticonderoga, from a view of its grey and broken ruins.  Here and there, perchance, the walls may remain almost complete; but elsewhere may be only a shapeless mound, cumbrous with its very strength, and overgrown, through long years of peace and neglect, with grass and alien weeds.

Nevertheless, looking at the old warrior with affection—­for, slight as was the communication between us, my feeling towards him, like that of all bipeds and quadrupeds who knew him, might not improperly be termed so,—­I could discern the main points of his portrait.  It was marked with the noble and heroic qualities which showed it to be not a mere accident, but of good right, that he had won a distinguished name.  His spirit could never, I conceive, have been characterized by an uneasy activity; it must, at any period of his life, have required an impulse to set him in motion; but once stirred up, with obstacles to overcome, and an adequate object to be attained, it was not in the man to give out or fail.  The heat that had formerly pervaded his nature, and which was not yet extinct, was never of the kind that flashes and flickers in a blaze; but rather a deep red glow, as of iron in a furnace.  Weight, solidity, firmness—­this was the expression of his repose, even in such decay as had crept untimely over him at the period of which I speak.  But I could imagine, even then, that, under some excitement which should go deeply into his consciousness—­roused by a trumpet’s peal, loud enough to awaken all of his energies that were not dead, but only slumbering—­he was yet capable of flinging off his infirmities like a sick man’s gown, dropping the staff of age to seize a battle-sword, and starting up once more a warrior.  And, in so intense a moment his demeanour would have still been calm.  Such an exhibition, however, was but to be pictured in fancy; not to be anticipated, nor desired.  What I saw in him—­as evidently as the indestructible ramparts of Old Ticonderoga, already cited as the most appropriate simile—­was the features of stubborn and ponderous endurance, which might well have amounted to obstinacy in his earlier days; of integrity, that, like most of his other endowments,