Page:Studies in Letters and Life (Woodberry, 1890).djvu/266

256 of having his due in manhood, and valued fame.

This was a character which might well spare the humanities. The fact remains that he did spare them. What he lost was culture. The confession that he makes of the gradual atrophy of his æsthetic tastes will be long quoted as one of the most remarkable facts of his life. He began with a susceptibility to music, which by his son's account he did not lose; with a liking for poetry, such that he read The Excursion twice, and he would not have read it except for pleasure; and he used to take Milton with him in his pocket. In art he went but a little way, if, indeed, he ever really had any eye for it. He was religious, as an English boy usually is; but his interest in belief regarding religious subjects died out, and, what is of more consequence, the emotions which were called out by it in early life ceased to be exercised. There was a deadening, in other words, of all his nature, except so far as it was fed by his work, his family, and his friends in its intellectual and social parts. So complete was this change that it affected even his appreciation of beautiful scenery, which had evidently