The foregoing chapters have been written in vain if the reader, personally unacquainted with Professor Blackie, has not by this time realised what manner of man he was. But there are aspects of his public life and conversation to which justice can only be done by giving them the necessary emphasis with a multitude of small touches. An attempt to vivify his portrait in this way may therefore be made in a chapter set apart for the purpose.

Blackie at home and Blackie abroad differed considerably. He was a compound of two individualities both wholesome and good, but not the same in manifestation. At home he was gentle, considerate, methodical, serious; only at table relaxing into discursive talk and occasional explosiveness. His domestic pleasantries were tranquil, and took the form of genial banter and of equally genial irony. To the latter kind belonged the continued narration of the married life and adventures of Mr Bob Melliss. He was a mythical schoolfellow, gifted and amiable. In an evil hour, allured by her rank and pretensions, he had married the Lady Letitia Lambert. This stately personage belonged to the school of “white-satin-shoe philosophers.” Her dainty nerves endured no breath from the plebeian world, but required an environment of patrician and ceremonious elegance. The easy-going Bob had to surrender every friend and every habit of his bachelor days, and became a model husband for this lofty and sensitive dame. He forgot the very meaning of liberty, ate and drank as her stern glance directed, spoke and kept silence at her command. He was not unhappy,—far from it,—but he was a slave, a well-dressed appendage to the Lady Letitia's train.