clouds, the hovering
pall of London smoke, were all dear to him, and he was anxious that I
should not lose anything of their charm.

He was anxious that I should not miss the value of anything in England,
and while he volunteered that the aristocracy had the corruptions of
aristocracies everywhere, he insisted upon my respectful interest in it
because it was so historical. Perhaps there was a touch of irony in this
demand, but it is certain that he was very happy in England. He had come
of the age when a man likes smooth, warm keeping, in which he need make
no struggle for his comfort; disciplined and obsequious service; society,
perfectly ascertained within the larger society which we call
civilization; and in an alien environment, for which he was in no wise
responsible, he could have these without a pang of the self-reproach
which at home makes a man unhappy amidst his luxuries, when he considers
their cost to others. He had a position which forbade thought of
unfairness in the conditions; he must not wake because of the slave, it
was his duty to sleep. Besides, at that time Lowell needed all the rest
he could get, for he had lately passed through trials such as break the
strength of men, and how them with premature age. He was living alone in
his little house in Lowndes Square, and Mrs. Lowell was in the country,
slowly recovering from the effects of the terrible typhus which she had
barely survived in Madrid. He was yet so near the anguish of that
experience that he told me he had still in his nerves the expectation of
a certain agonized cry from her which used to rend them. But he said he
had adjusted himself to this, and he went on to speak with a patience
which was more affecting in him than in men of more phlegmatic
temperament, of how we were able to adjust ourselves to all our trials
and to the constant presence of pain. He said he was never free of a
certain distress, which was often a sharp pang, in one of his shoulders,
but his physique had established such relations with it that, though he
was never unconscious of it, he was able to endure it without a
recognition of it as suffering.

He seemed to me, however, very well, and at his age of sixty-three, I
could not see that he was less alert and vigorous than he was when I
first knew him in Cambridge. He had the same brisk, light step, and
though his beard was well whitened and his auburn hair had grown ashen
through the red, his face had the freshness an