But man, at last, is the creature fullest of contradictions, and his vanity is at the bottom of most of them. "What a sensible and agreeable companion is that gentleman who has just left us," said the famous Charles Townshend to the worthy and sensible Fitzherbert; "I never passed an evening with a more entertaining acquaintance in my life." "What could entertain you? the gentleman never opened his lips." "I grant you, my dear Fitz, but he listened faithfully to what I said, and always laughed in the right place." Darwin, speaking of one of his walks in New Zealand, says, "I should have enjoyed it more, if my companion, the chief, had not possessed extraordinary conversational powers. I knew only three words--'good,' 'bad,' and 'yes;' and with these I answered all his remarks, without, of course, having understood one word he said. This, however, was quite sufficient; I was a good listener, an agreeable person, and he never ceased talking to me." John Chester was a delightful companion to Coleridge, on the same principle. This Chester, says Hazlitt, was one of those who was attracted to Coleridge's discourse as flies are to honey, or bees in swarming-time to the sound of a brass pan. He gave Hazlitt his private opinion, though he rarely opened his lips, that Coleridge was a wonderful man! "He followed Coleridge into Germany, where the Kantian philosophers were puzzled how to bring him under any of their categories. When he sat down at table with his idol, John's felicity was complete; Sir Walter Scott's, or Blackwood's, when they sat down at the table with the king, was not more so. Once he was astonished," continues Hazlitt, "that I should be able to suggest anything to Coleridge that he did not already know!" "Demosthenes Taylor, as he was called (that is, the editor of Demosthenes), was the most silent man," said Dr. Johnson to Boswell, "the merest statue of a man, that I have ever seen. I once dined in company with him, and all he said during the whole time was not more than Richard. How a man should say only Richard, it is not easy to imagine. But it was thus: Dr. Douglass was talking of Dr. Zachary Grey, and was ascribing to him something that was written by Dr. Richard Grey. So, to correct him, Taylor said (imitating his affected sententious emphasis and nod) 'Richard.'" "Demosthenes" must have been "a sensible and agreeable companion." That one word was to the point, and was more effective than a dozen would have been to a man like Johnson. Two words, however, if we are to believe the story chronicled by John of Brompton of the mother of Thomas a Becket, performed a still more memorable service. His father, Gilbert a Becket, was taken prisoner during one of the Crusades by a Syrian emir, and held for a considerable period in a kind of honorable captivity. A daughter of the emir saw him at her father's table, heard him converse, fell in love with him, and offered to arrange the means by which both might escape to Europe. The project