And some few, of noble mind, saw in him the grandest and most religious spectacle that men can look upon--a human soul which has not suffered itself to be conquered by adversity.
Very soon the earl gathered round him, besides acquaintances, a knot of real friends, affectionate and true, who, in the charm of his cultivated mind, and the simplicity of his good heart, found ample amends for every thing that nature had denied him, the loss of which he bore so cheerfully and uncomplainingly.
By-and-by, induced by these, the excellent people whom, as by mesmeric attraction, goodness soon draws to itself, he began to go out a little into society.

It could be done, with some personal difficulty and pain, and some slight trouble to his friends, which last was for a long time his chief objection; for a merciful familiarity with his own affliction had been brought about by time, and by the fact that he had never known any other sort of existence, and only, as a blind person guesses at colors, could speculate upon how it must feel to move about freely, to walk and run.

He had also lost much of his early shyness, and ceased to feel any actual dread of being looked at.

His chief difficulty was the practical one of locomotion, and this for him was solved much easier than if he had been a man of limited means.

By some expenditure of money, and by a good deal of ingenious contrivance, he managed to be taken about as easily in Edinburg as at Cairnforth; was present at church and law-court, theatre and concert-room, and at many a pleasant reunion of pleasant people every where.
For in his heart Lord Cairnforth rather liked society.