He was fond of anecdote, and told his stories with the fluency of a man accustomed to public speaking, and the animation and point of a man accustomed to the society of men of wit as well as of men of action. His recollections were wonderfully distinct, and it always gave me a peculiar thrill to hear him talk about the great men he had lived and acted with in both hemispheres, as familiarly as if he had parted from them only an hour before. It was bringing history very close to me, and peopling it with living beings,--beings of flesh and blood, who ate and drank and slept and wore clothes as we do; for here was one of them, the friend and companion of the greatest among them all, whom I had known through books, as I knew them long before I knew him in actual life, and every one of whose words and gestures seemed to give me a clearer conception of what they, too, must have been. Still he never appeared to live in the recollections of his youth, as most old men do. His life was too active a one for this, and the great principles he had consecrated it to were too far-reaching and comprehensive, too full of living, actual interest, too fresh and vigorous in their vitality, to allow a man of his sanguine and active temperament to forget himself in the past when there was so much to do in the present. This gave a peculiar charm to his conversation; for, no matter what the subject might be, he always talked like a man who believed what he said, and whose faith, a living principle of thought and action, was constantly kept in a genial glow by the quickness and depth of his sympathies. His smile told this; for it was full of sweetness and gentleness, though with a dash of earnestness about it, an under-current of serious thought, that made you feel as if you wanted to look behind it, and reminded you, at times, of a landscape at sunset, when there is just light enough to show you how many things there are in it that you would gladly dwell upon, if the day were only a little longer. His intercourse with his children was affectionate and confiding,--that with his daughters touchingly so. They had shared with him two years of his captivity at Olmütz, and he seemed never to look at them without remembering it. They had been his companions when he most needed companionship, and had learnt to enter into his feelings and study his happiness at an age when most girls are absorbed in themselves. The effect of this early discipline was never lost. They had found happiness where few seek it, in self-denial and self-control, a religious cultivation of domestic affections, and a thoughtful development of their minds as sources of strength and enjoyment. They were happy,--happy in what they had done and in what they were doing,--entering cheerfully upon the serene evening of lives consecrated to duty, with children around them to love them as they had loved their father and mother, and that father still with them to tell them that they had never deceived him.