"حياة ومراسلات اللواء السير جون مالكوم، قائد فرسان وسام الطُهر، المبعوث السابق إلى بلاد فارس وحاكم بومباي؛ من رسائل ومذكرات غير منشورة. في مجلّدين. المجلد II." [‎٤‎١‎٩] (٦٥٤/٤٣٦)

SOCIAL ASPECTS.
419
Malcolm's hospitality was of that best and pleasantest
kind which made every one who came within its influ
ence thoroughly at his ease. There was a kindliness
and a joyousness in it, which many said were unequalled
in all theii experience of mankind. The conversation in
which Malcolm and his friends indulged was animated
and exhilarating, but there was no leaven of ill-nature in
it. u Conversation," wrote one whom I have named
above, " may have all that is valuable in it, and all that
is lively and pleasant, without anything that comes
under the head of personality. The house in which,
above all others, I have ever been an inmate, the life
and the spirit and the joy of conversation have been the
most intense, is a house in which I hardly ever heard an
evil word uttered against any one. The genial heart of
cordial sympathy with which its illustrious master sought
out the good side in every person and every thing, and
which has found an inadequate expression in his de
lightful Sketches of Persia/ seemed to communicate
itself to all the members of his family, and operated as a
charm even upon his visitors."^
Another great charm of the conversation of Hyde
Hall was that it was so perfectly natural and sponta
neous. It was not the custom there to talk for effect.
Playfulness, not unmingled with wisdom of the most un
obtrusive kind, was the prevailing characteristic of the
society to be met in that joyous home. Grave men
threw aside their gravity there and became sportive as
children. There could not have been a better place for
diggers and delvers after truth, wearied by their pro
found researches in the mines of science; for there was
uone^ in which such recreation was to be found—a re
creation literally of energy and activity, which sent men
* Julius Hare's Guesses at Truth,
2 E 2