Page:Charles von Hügel (1903 memoir).djvu/95

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IN MEMORIAM[1].


BARON VON HÜGEL was not only a traveller and a student: he was also a man of the world in the good and noble sense of the word, a brave soldier, an able diplomatist, an accomplished linguist, and an agreeable and popular member of society. When he returned from his travels, he fixed his residence in his beautiful villa of Hietzing, near Vienna, where for many years he was surrounded with every object that could charm the eye and please the fancy of a man of taste and refinement, passionately fond of the beauties of nature and of art. Honoured by his Sovereign, beloved by his friends, and visited by strangers from every part of the world, whom he always welcomed with the most cordial hospitality, his time was divided between society, literary pursuits, and the practical study of botany and horticulture. Around him sprang up the various and numerous shrubs and plants which he had brought back from distant countries. Rare collections of foreign birds and insects, works of art, ingenious devices, graceful fountains, and flowers of every land, formed a scene of beauty, fairy-like in its loveliness, and bearing in all its details the impress of a mind that took pleasure in all the beautiful creations of God, and loved to impart those

  1. To avoid unnecessary repetition the first eight pages of this Memoir are here omitted. The anonymous writer, the late Lady Georgiana Fullerton, and her brother Lord Granville, were old friends of my father’s, and had been frequent visitors at the Austrian Embassy at Florence. A. v. H.