delineated by a friend, we expect to find painted in the softened manner of one who is half disposed to imitate or adopt them. Yet, though I have used the word ‘naturalist’ to denote the keen and solitary observation with which Bagehot watched society, no word describes him worse, if we attribute to it any of that coldness and stillness of curiosity which we are apt to associate with scientific vigilance. Especially in his youth, buoyancy, vivacity, velocity of thought, were of the essence of the impression which he made. He had high spirits and great capacities for enjoyment, great sympathies indeed with the old English Cavalier. In his Essay on Macaulay he paints that character with profound sympathy:— ‘What historian, indeed,’ he says, ‘has ever estimated the Cavalier character? There is Clarendon, the grave, rhetorical, decorous, lawyer—piling words, congealing arguments—very stately, a little grim. There is Hume, the Scotch metaphysician, who has made out the best case for such people as never were, for a Charles who never died, for a Strafford who could never have been attainted, a saving, calculating North-countryman, fat, impassive, who lived on eightpence a day. What have these people to do with an enjoying English gentleman? Talk of the ways of spreading a wholesome Conservatism throughout the country ... as far as communicating and establishing your creed is concerned, try a little pleasure. The way to keep up old customs is to enjoy old customs; the way to be satisfied with the present state of things, is to enjoy that state of things. Over the “Cavalier” mind this world passes with a thrill of delight; there is an exultation in a daily event, zest in the “regular thing,” joy at an old feast.’[3] And that aptly represents himself. Such arrogance as he seemed to have in early life was the arrogance as much of enjoyment as of detachment of mind—the _insouciance_ of the old Cavalier as much at least as the calm of a mind not accessible to the contagion of social feelings. He always talked, in youth, of his spirits as inconveniently high; and once wrote to me that he did not think they were quite as ‘boisterous’ as they had been, and that his fellow-creatures were not sorry for the abatement; nevertheless, he added, ‘I am quite fat, gross, and ruddy.’ He was, indeed, excessively fond of hunting, vaulting, and almost all muscular effort, so that his life would be wholly misconceived by anyone who, hearing of his ‘detachment’ of thought, should picture his mind as a vigilantly observant, far-away intelligence, such as Hawthorne’s, for example. He liked to be in the thick of the _mêlée_ when talk grew warm, though he was never so absorbed in it as not to keep his mind cool.