Yes, how they loved it! Ned was perhaps particularly a born appreciator; and it was worth seeing how the tears would come into his fine eyes, as his voice shook with tenderness over a fine phrase or a noble passage.

They had discovered some of the most thrilling things in English literature together, at that impressionable age when such things mean most to us.

Together they had read Keats for the first wonderful time; together learned Shakespeare's Sonnets by heart; together rolled out over tavern-tables the sumptuous cadences of De Quincey.

Wonderful indeed, and never to be forgotten, were those evenings when, the day at last over, they would leave their offices behind them, and, while the sunset was turning the buildings of Tyre into enchanted towers, and a clemency of release breathed upon its streets, steal to the quiet corner of their favourite tavern; to drink port and share their last new author, or their own latest rhymes, and then to emerge again, with high calm hearts and eloquent eyes, beneath the splendid stars.
All the arts within their reach they thus shared together,--pictures, music, theatres,--in a fine comradeship.

Together they had bravoed the great tragedians, and together hopelessly worshipped the beautiful faces, enskied and sainted, of famous actresses.