social enjoyments were very valuable. He
took pleasure in watching the encounter of keen wits, the talk of clever
conversationalists. His own talent in that line was not small, though
he seldom used it in large circles; but with two or three only about
him, the treasures of his well-stored mind came out often very
brilliantly. Then he was so alive to all that was passing in the world
outside, and took as keen an interest in politics, social ethics, and
schemes of philanthropy as if he himself had been like other men,
instead of being condemned (or exalted--which shall we say? Dis
aliter visum!) to a destiny of such solemn and awful isolation.

Yet he never put forward his affliction so as to make it painful to
those around him. Many, in the generation now nearly passed away, long
and tenderly remembered the little figure, placed motionless in the
centre of a brilliant circle--all clever men and charming women--
yet of whose notice the cleverest and most charming were always proud.
Not because he was an earl--nobility was plentiful enough at Edinburg
then--but because he was himself. It was a pleasure just to sit
beside him, and to meet his pleasantness with cheerful chat, gay banter,
or affectionate earnestness.

For every body loved him. Women, of course, did; they could not help
it; but men were drawn to him likewise, with the sort of reverential
tenderness that they would feel toward a suffering child or woman--
and something more--intense respect. His high sense of honor, his
true manliness, attracted the best of all the notabilities then
constituting that brilliant set; and there was not one of them worth
having for a friend at all who was not, in greater or less degree, the
friend of the Earl of Cairnforth.

But there was another side of his Edinburg life which did not appear
till long after he had quitted Modern Athens forever--nor even then
fully; not until he had passed quite away from the comments of this
mortal world. Then, many a struggling author, or worn-out professional
man, to whom life was all up-hill, or to whom sudden misfortune had made
the handful of "siller" (i.e. "silver") a matter of absolute salvation
to both body and soul--scores of such as these afterward recalled
hours or half hours spent in the cozy study in Charlotte Square, beside
the little figure in its chair--outwardly capable of so little, yet
endowed with both the power and will to do so much. Doing it so
generously, too