Above all, he
retained throughout life that deep and exquisite tenderness of feeling
which formed the supreme charm of his character, as it did of his
acting, and to which it would not, we think, be easy to find a parallel
in a person of his own sex. It was not alone in his ardent family
affections--his fond recollections of the mother he lost in boyhood,
his devotion to his sister, wife and brother, his passionate love of
his children, or his anguish and abiding sorrow at every severance of
such ties--that this quality displayed itself. His sympathy with all
suffering, especially if conjoined with innocence and patient
endurance, was not only quick but strong. His eyes fill with tears at
the sight of a fellow-passenger in a mail-coach, a poor deformed boy,
who is carrying a basket of toys from one town to another, and he
shakes his hand at parting with a "God bless thee!" that comes direct
from the heart. It was strikingly characteristic of him that, with all
his intense ambition, his resolute desire--to use a phrase which we
have heard him apply to himself--"to rise above the crowd, and stand
when others fall," he chose for his wife a young provincial actress,
whom he had once chided for her inattention or inability, but whose
artlessness of manner, purity and sweetness of nature and aptness for
improvement so enlisted his sympathies that he constituted himself her
friend and guide until the death of her father and brother awakened a
still warmer solicitude, bringing with it the discovery that "love had
been the inspiration of all the counsel and assistance he had rendered
her.
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