. A restless, fiery soul, his temper, never of
the best, had grown daily more gnarled and perverse. Woe betide the
imprudent human who crossed him! What chance had anybody against a man
who had the command of all the forcible words in twenty-eight languages!
His peremptory voice everywhere ensured obedience. To all save his
dearest friends he was proud and haughty. Then came the gold
shower. There was actually a plethora of money. The world, so long
irreconcilable, had acknowledged his merits, and the whole man softened.
The angelical character of the forehead gradually spread downwards, and
in time tempered even the ferocity of the terrible jaw. It was the same
man, but on better terms with himself and everybody else. We see him
sitting or strolling in his garden with quite a jaunty air--and when
there is a cigar in his mouth, the shadow of which modifies still more
the characteristics of that truculent region, it is hard to believe that
we are looking at the same man. He has a youthful vigour, an autumnal
green. In one photograph Lady Burton, devoted as ever to her husband, is
seen nestling at his side and leaning her head against his shoulder. She
had grown uncomfortably stout and her tight-fitting dress was hard put
to it to bear the strain. Her glorious hair was now grown gray and thin,
and it was generally hidden by a not very becoming big yellowish wig
with curls, which made her look like a magnified Marie Antoinette.

Burton's chief pleasure in his garden was feeding the birds. They used
to wait for him in flocks on an almond tree, and became "quite imperious
in their manners if he did not attend to them properly." He loved the
sparrow especially, for Catullus' sake.

His gigantic personality impressed all who met him. Conversation
with him reduced the world from a sphere to a spherule. It shrank
steadily--he had traversed so much of it, and he talked about
out-of-the-way places so familiarly. As of old, when friends stayed
with him he never wanted to go to bed, and they, too, listening to his
learned, animated and piquant talk, were quite content to outwatch the
Bear. As an anthropologist his knowledge was truly amazing. "He was also
a first-rate surgeon and had read all the regular books." [505] People
called him, for the vastness of his knowledge, the Encyclopaedia
Britannica. He looked to the past and the future. To the past, for no
one was more keenly interested in archaeology. He delighted to wander on
fo