Precautional--"I show emotion quickest by the eye, and so, generally speaking, do most people; some change colour very quick; some reveal it in the mouth; but the sudden dilatation and contraction of the eye, the expression it is capable of, make it on the whole the safest guide.
"I trust the eye on the whole," he said; "guilelessness and an unstained conscience are not really manifested either in feature or deportment, but the eye will almost always tell you true." His conversation, when he was in form, was, without exactly being very brilliant, very inspiring.

He had great freshness of expression, and told very few stories, and those only in illustration, never on their own merits.

He was very [Greek: mnemonikos], or retentive--the first requisite, says Plato, of a philosopher--and was consequently well supplied with quotations and allusions, not slavishly repeated, but worked naturally in.

I do not mean that he passed for a good talker by skilful plagiarizing, but I found that the wider my range of reading became the more I appreciated his talk--drawn, as it was, from all kinds of sources, and bringing with it that aroma of a far-reaching mind, the _fascination_ that culture can bestow, the feeling that, after all, everything is interesting, and that no knowledge is unworthy of the attention of the philosopher.
He hardly ever discussed current politics, though he would argue on political principles with the greatest keenness: neither had he accurate historical knowledge, or antiquarian; but he enjoyed listening to such talk.

For the principles, the poetic aspect, of science he had a devoted interest.