y father was very seldom
wrong, my uncle never quite in the right; but, as my father once said of
him, "Roland beats about the bush till he sends out the very bird that
we went to search for. He is never in the wrong without suggesting to us
what is the right." All in my uncle was stern, rough, and angular; all
in my father was sweet, polished, and rounded into a natural grace. My
uncle's character cast out a multiplicity of shadows, like a Gothic pile
in a northern sky. My father stood serene in the light, like a Greek
temple at mid-day in a southern clime. Their persons corresponded with
their natures. My uncle's high, aquiline features, bronzed hue, rapid
fire of eye, and upper lip that always quivered, were a notable contrast
to my father's delicate profile, quiet, abstracted gaze, and the
steady sweetness that rested on his musing smile. Roland's forehead was
singularly high, and rose to a peak in the summit where phrenologists
place the organ of veneration; but it was narrow, and deeply furrowed.
Augustine's might be as high, but then soft, silky hair waved carelessly
over it, concealing its height, but not its vast breadth, on which not a
wrinkle was visible. And yet, withal, there was a great family likeness
between the two brothers. When some softer sentiment subdued him, Roland
caught the very look of Augustine; when some high emotion animated my
father, you might have taken him for Roland. I have often thought since,
in the greater experience of mankind which life has afforded me, that
if, in early years, their destinies had been exchanged,--if Roland had
taken to literature, and my father had been forced into action,--each
would have had greater worldly success. For Roland's passion and energy
would have given immediate and forcible effect to study; he might
have been a historian or a poet. It is not study alone that produces a
writer, it is intensity. In the mind, as in yonder chimney, to make the
fire burn hot and quick, you must narrow the draught. Whereas, had
my father been forced into the practical world, his calm depth of
comprehension, his clearness of reason, his general accuracy in such
notions as he once entertained and pondered over, joined to a temper
that crosses and losses could never ruffle, and utter freedom from
vanity and self-love, from prejudice and passion, might have made him
a very wise and enlightened counsellor in the great affairs of life,--a
lawyer, a diplomatist, a statesman, for w