Page:Maud Howe - A Newport Aquarelle.djvu/65

 which, although uncultivated, was all the more remarkable. He could play any air that he had ever heard, with an abandon and spirit which to unmusical people were more captivating than the careful performance of a finished musician. He could talk of English politics with a certain knowledge of facts, but with an indifference to principles which proved that he was not guided by them.

He was fairly well educated, had been at a good public school, but had not passed through a university.

He knew quite as much of Paris, Vienna, and Rome, as of London, and seemed even rather more at home in the society of these European capitals than in that of London, judging from his conversation concerning them. He spoke—astonishing fact for an Englishman!—excellent French, good German, and could make himself understood in the other languages of Europe. His ideas about art were absolutely without value.