Many years afterwards, looking back upon this period of severe struggle, he wrote: “When I consider the few introductions I then had—to men who could be of no assistance to me—I look back with a renewal of the despair I then felt.... These days of unhappiness and suffering tended greatly to fortify me, so that nothing afterwards could come amiss, nothing but death could bring me to a condition of suffering such as I then endured.... I could not help regretting the noble fields that were everywhere around me for exertion in my profession, and which I found closed against me.” Meanwhile youthful acquaintances in Edinburgh, Horner and Brougham, were getting places in the ministry. This year his “Anatomy of Expression” was published, and was at once received with high favour, many painters adopting it as their text-book. Flaxman declared he considered Mr. Bell had done more for the arts than any one of that age. Fuseli called it truly valuable. Charles Bell had more than an ordinary measure of liveliness, good-humour, and geniality. One day he writes: “A band of Pandæans are playing before my window. They make me frisk it. Last night I had a little supper here, with some good flute-playing. It was intended to make Horner know Wilkie, the Scotch Teniers.” All through life he retained this sensibility to lively music. The sound of a familiar Scotch air would start him whistling, and laying aside work, he would take his wife by the hand, and make her dance with him through room after room.