seemed to me very vivid, but that it reminded me of a not very authentic
picture of that queen, in spangled crimson and lace, which hung in the
hall at Addington. Hugh laughed, and said: "Well, I must confess that
very picture was in my mind!"

With regard to his more modern stories it is impossible not to be
impressed by their lightness and swiftness, their flashes of beauty and
emotion, their quick rippling talk; but it is hard, at times, not to
feel them to be vitiated by their quite unconscious tendency to
represent a point of of view. They were once called by a malign reviewer
"the most detestable kind of tract," and though this is what the French
call a _saugrenu_ criticism, which implies something dull, boorish, and
provincial, yet it is easy to recognise what is meant. It is not unjust
to resent the appearance of the cultivated and sensitive Anglican,
highly bred and graceful, who is sure to turn out hard and
hollow-hearted, or the shabby, trotting, tobacco-scented Roman Catholic
priest, who is going to emerge at a crisis as a man of inspired dignity
and solemnity. Sometimes, undoubtedly, the books are too intent upon
expunging other forms of religious life, rather than in tracing the
movements of the soul. Probably this was inseparable from the position
Hugh had taken up, and there was not the slightest pose, or desire to
improve the situation about his mind. The descriptions, the
lightly-touched details, the naturalness and ease of the talk are
wholly admirable. He must have been a very swift observer, both of
nature and people, because he never gave the least impression of
observing anything. I never saw him stop to look at a view, or go into
raptures over anything beautiful or picturesque; in society he was
either silent and absorbed, or more commonly extremely animated and
expansive. But he never seemed to be on the look-out for any impressions
at all, and still less to be recording them.