me for him a thing that was not tenable, that it was
perilous and scandalous to attempt maintaining. Twenty years in
the dreary, weltering lake of parliamentary confusion, with its
disappointments and bewilderments, had not quenched this tendency, in
which, as we say, he persevered as by a law of nature itself, for the
essence of his mind was clearness, healthy purity, incompatibility
with fraud in any of its forms. What he accomplished, therefore,
whether great or little, was all to be _added_ to the sum of good;
none of it to be deducted. There shone mildly in his whole conduct
a beautiful veracity, as if it were unconscious of itself; a perfect
spontaneous absence of all cant, hypocrisy, and hollow pretence,
not in word and act only, but in thought and instinct. To a singular
extent it can be said of him that he was a spontaneous clear man. Very
gentle, too, though full of fire; simple, brave, graceful. What he
did, and what he said, came from him as light from a luminous body,
and had thus always in it a high and rare merit, which any of the more
discerning could appreciate fully.

"To many, for a long while, Mr. Buller passed merely for a man of wit,
and certainly his beautiful natural gaiety of character, which by no
means meant _levity_, was commonly thought to mean it, and did for
many years, hinder the recognition of his intrinsic higher qualities.
Slowly it began to be discovered that, under all this many-coloured
radiancy and coruscation, there burnt a most steady light; a sound,
penetrating intellect, full of adroit resources, and loyal by nature
itself to all that was methodic, manful, true;--in brief, a mildly
resolute, chivalrous, and gallant character, capable of doing much
serious service.

"A man of wit he indisputably was, whatever more amongst the wittiest
of men. His speech, and manner of being, played everywhere like soft
brilliancy of lambent fire round the common objects of the hour, and
was, beyond all others that English society could show, entitled to
the name of excellent, for it was spontaneous, like all else in him,
genuine, humane,--the glittering play of the soul of a real man. To
hear him, the most serious of men might think within himself, 'How
beautiful is human gaiety too!' Alone of wits, Buller never made wit;
he could be silent, or grave enough, where better was going; often
rather liked to be silent if permissible, and always was so where
needful. His wit, moreover, was ever the