And this I take to be the true poetical temperament essential to every artist who aspires to be something more than a scene-painter.

But, above all things, he was most interested in any display of human passions or affections; he loved to see the true colours of the heart, where they are most transparent--in the uneducated and poor--for he was something of an optimist, and had a hearty faith in the loveliness of our nature.
Perhaps, indeed, he owed much of the insight into and mastery over character that he was afterwards considered to display, to his disbelief that there is any wickedness so dark as not to be susceptible of the light in some place or another.

But Maltravers had his fits of unsociability, and then nothing but the most solitary scenes delighted him.

Winter or summer, barren waste or prodigal verdure, all had beauty in his eyes; for their beauty lay in his own soul, through which he beheld them.

From these walks he would return home at dusk, take his simple meal, rhyme or read away the long evenings with such alternation as music or the dreamy thoughts of a young man with gay life before him could afford.