Another person, who seemed to have been much struck with Dudley, and who also occupied a good deal of his time, was Mr. Filmer; but to say the truth, Dudley himself was less pleased with his society than with that of Edgar Adelon. It was always smooth, easy, agreeable. There was not the slightest appearance of effort in his conversation; nothing strained, nothing at all peculiar in his demeanour. He was learned, witty, imaginative; mingling quiet cheerfulness and unobtrusive gaiety with occasional strains of thought so deep and so intense, yet so pellucid and bright, that the hearer was carried away with wonder and delight. He was fond of talking of religious subjects, and with all the many associated with them by his church. He had a love for, and an intimate acquaintance with, ancient architecture in all its branches; and he combined therewith fancies, hypotheses, or theories, as the reader may have it, which gave a sort of mystical signification to every part and portion of an old building, and spread, as it were, a religious feeling through the conception and the execution of the whole. Every church, or abbey, or cathedral, which had been raised in pure catholic times, was in his eyes but a symbol of the spiritual church--a hierarchy, as it were, in stone. He loved sacred music, too. There was not a chant, a canon, an anthem, a mass, or a dirge, that he did not know, and could descant upon eloquently, or sit down and play it with exquisite taste, if no great execution, joining occasionally a powerful and melodious voice in snatches of rich song, without the slightest appearance of vanity or display, but merely as if to give the hearer an idea of the composition which he had mentioned. All this was very charming, but still there was something which made Charles Dudley prefer the frank, free, fearless conversation of Edgar Adelon. He knew not well what that something was; he could not term it a studiedness, but it was all too definite, too circumscribed by rules, too much tied down to purposes and views which allowed no expansion but in peculiar directions. Although there was no affectation, there seemed to be an object in everything he said. There was, in short, a predominant idea to which everything was referrible, and which deprived his conversation of that wide and natural range, that free and liberal course, which is one of the greatest charms of friendly intercourse. One felt that, in a very different sense from that in which the beautiful words were originally used--'he was in the world, but not of the world.'