had taken hold of him.  In them lay no abstracted student’s languor, no reflex burning of a solitary lamp; but a quiet grappling force engaged the penetrating look.  Gazing upon them, you were drawn in suddenly among the thousand whirring wheels of a capacious and a vigorous mind, that was both reasoning and prompt, keen of intellect, acting throughout all its machinery, and having all under full command:  an orbed mind, supplying its own philosophy, and arriving at the sword-stroke by logical steps,—­a mind much less supple than a soldier’s; anything but the mind of a Hamlet.  The eyes were dark as the forest’s border is dark; not as night is dark.  Under favourable lights their colour was seen to be a deep rich brown, like the chestnut, or more like the hazeledged sunset brown which lies upon our western rivers in the winter floods, when night begins to shadow them.

The side-view of his face was an expression of classic beauty rarely now to be beheld, either in classic lands or elsewhere.  It was severe; the tender serenity of the full bow of the eyes relieved it.  In profile they showed little of their intellectual quality, but what some might have thought a playful luminousness, and some a quick pulse of feeling.  The chin was firm; on it, and on the upper lip, there was a clipped growth of black hair.  The whole visage widened upward from the chin, though not very markedly before it reached the broad-lying brows.  The temples were strongly indented by the swelling of the forehead above them:  and on both sides of the head there ran a pregnant ridge, such as will sometimes lift men a deplorable half inch above the earth we tread.  If this man was a problem to others, he was none to himself; and when others called him an idealist, he accepted the title, reading himself, notwithstanding, as one who was less flighty than many philosophers and professedly practical teachers of his generation.  He saw far, and he grasped ends beyond obstacles:  he was nourished by sovereign principles; he despised material present interests; and, as I have said, he was less supple than a soldier.  If the title of idealist belonged to him, we will not immediately decide that it was opprobrious.  The idealized conception of stern truths played about his head certainly for those who knew and who loved it.  Such a man, perceiving a devout end to be reached, might prove less scrupulous in his course, possibly, and less remorseful, than revolutionary Generals.  His smile was quite unclouded, and came softly as a curve in water.  It seemed to flow with, and to pass in and out of, his thoughts, to be a part of his emotion and his meaning when it shone transiently full.  For as he had an orbed mind, so had he an orbed nature.  The passions were absolutely in harmony with the intelligence.  He had the English manner; a remarkable simplicity contrasting with the demonstrative outcries and gesticulations of his friends when they joined him on the height.  Calling them each by name, he received their caresses and took their hands; after which he touched the old man’s shoulder.