o
another; but then he had nothing puritanical or pharisaical in his
nature; he was too highly cultivated to be moral, and arguing the
point in the mood of sweet _Barbara_, he had often succeeded in
persuading pretty women that he did right in loving them, though their
household duties belonged to another.

I have said that he was too highly cultivated to be religious. He was
exceedingly emotional and intellectual; and the procrustean bed of a
creed would have been intolerable torture to him. Life throbbed around
him in an aurora of skittles. The world of morality only raised a
languid smile, or tickled an appetite pleased with novelty. An
archdeacon, or a book of sermons delighted him. He would play with
them and ponder over them, as if they were old china, or curious
etchings. But he was never profane, especially before bishops, or
children, and he always went to church on Sunday morning.

He went to church on Sunday morning, because it was quaint and
old-fashioned to do so, and because he loved to see the women of his
acquaintance in their devotional moods and attitudes. There was hardly
any mood or attitude in which he did not love to see a woman, partly
because he was full of human sympathy and tenderness, and partly for
other reasons. I suppose he was a student of human nature, though he
always repudiated the notion of being a student of anything. He said
that life was too short for serious study, and that every kind of
pursuit should be tempered with fooling; while to prevent fooling
becoming wearisome it should always be dashed with something earnest,
as the sodawater is dashed with brandy, or the Government of India
with Mr. Whitley Stokes.

Nigrorum memor, dum licet, ignium,
Misce stultitiam consiliis brevem:
Dulce est desipere in loco.

But besides being a man of pleasure and a capital billiard player, he
was a Collector in the North-Western Provinces--a man who sat at the
receipt of custom under a punkah, and read his _Pioneer_. The Lord
High Cockalorum at Nynee Tal, Sir Somebody Thingmajig,--I am speaking
of years ago--did not like him, I believe; but nobody thought any the
worse of him for this; and although he continued to be a Collector
until the shades of evening, when all his contemporaries had retired
into the Dreamland of Commissionerships, he still loved and was loved;
and to the very last he read his French novels and quoted Horace,
sitting peacefully on the bank while the s