His appearance enforced these impressions--his handsome face, his radiant, unaverted eyes, his childish, unmodulated voice.

Afterwards, when those who loved him were in tears, there was something in all this unspotted comeliness that seemed to lend a mockery to the causes of their sorrow.
Certainly, among the young men of genius who, for so many ages, have gone up to Rome to test their powers, none ever made a fairer beginning than Roderick.

He rode his two horses at once with extraordinary good fortune; he established the happiest modus vivendi betwixt work and play.

He wrestled all day with a mountain of clay in his studio, and chattered half the night away in Roman drawing-rooms.

It all seemed part of a kind of divine facility.