His life was pre-eminently a life of work, but work which had in it, generally speaking, no flurry or painful anxiety--work, in fact, which seemed a delight and almost a necessity. He always rose early; seldom later than six o’clock, and often at four or five. He did so naturally and habitually; in this habit probably lay much of the secret of his freshness in work and freedom from all feverish and restless excitability, even at his busiest and most anxious times. Whatever his troubles or occupations might be, he could always fall asleep at night, and, thanks to his excellent constitution, sleep was to him sound and refreshing. But, as soon as nature was satisfied, the mind resumed its activity, and in the early hours of morning there came back the whole flood of anxieties and conceptions, which defied the power of sleep and demanded immediate execution. It was well that this was his habit, excepting when, in times of great excitement or difficulty, it led him to overtask his strength. For in the time of his fullest work these morning hours were the only ones, on which he could reckon with certainty, and to these he traced many of the best of his ideas. He experienced to the full, what most early risers know, that some of the brightest thoughts belong to the very hour of waking, often solving in the first freshness of the morning a difficulty, which had perplexed or conquered him over-night. At all times, but in those morning hours particularly, his rapidity of execution was something marvellous. He himself was hardly conscious of any unusual power in this respect, and would expect of others what he felt that he could do himself. Of trouble he was utterly unsparing: he would think nothing of sponging out a whole elevation, if an idea occurred to him, by which he thought that it could be improved, even in details. Of any principal feature of a great work the number of designs would be almost endless. Like most hard workers, he was to a great extent superior to interruption. In fact, for the most part he liked society during the time of his work. He would even listen to reading, or join in conversation, without allowing the secondary currents thus generated to interfere with the main stream of thought. The interruptions of business or necessity never seemed to break the thread of his ideas; seldom to flurry or discompose him. For he had this mark of readiness and clearness of conception, that he was capable, on the one hand, of setting to work at any moment, and resuming it, after interruption, just as if no interruption had occurred, and capable, on the other, of throwing it all aside at proper times, and joining in recreation or social intercourse with all the lightheartedness of a schoolboy. But for this readiness and elasticity of mind he could never have gone through the extraordinary amount of labour, which came upon him daily for many years.