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[168] to hide his faults, and always found in their forbearance and assistance the surest help to overcome them. His happy natural tendencies were carefully cultivated and strengthened, and the truthfulness, humanity, and kindness to every living being, which were the characteristics of both parents, and which he saw daily and hourly practised in his father's house, became also his second nature. From his mother he inherited the happiest temper, great sweetness and cheerfulness, with great natural courage and firmness combined and from his father the refinement of sentiment, the keen enjoyment of wit and fun, and some portion of that pleasant humor for which his father's conversation is still remembered with delight by those who knew him. The free and extensive hospitality of his parents, and the attraction which the society of his aunt, Miss C. M. Sedgwick, added to the family circle, brought among the many guests a large number of distinguished and superior people into the house; and William Sedgwick enjoyed the opportunity, rare for a boy and young man, of seeing, in a perfectly unconstrained way, the best society, and of acquiring early that ease and quiet self-possession, and the winning manners, which marked him at once as the gentleman wherever he appeared. No wonder that his happy home seemed perfect to him, and his birthplace the loveliest spot on earth. His love for it became only strengthened by separation; and even with the grandeur of the Alps before him, even in Rome, he could sigh for the beauties of his own mountains, lakes, and valleys. He had great love for and enjoyment in nature, and had gained much skill in all rural and manly exercises and amusements, which were so peculiarly adapted to his taste and his strong, robust constitution, that afterwards in town-life and amid sedentary occupations he often painfully longed for them. While no amount of fatigue, of hardship, or privations, could subdue his spirits or disturb his good humor, he was yet liable to become depressed by the confinement of his life as a lawyer. With these decided tastes for out-door life and occupations, it seems but natural that the temptation to neglect his books and
Sever and Francis, 1866.
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