stand by the sea-side, and speculate upon what a young shrimp could mean
by jumping in the sun.

With the handle of his stick in his mouth, he would move about his garden
in a short hurried step, now stopping to contemplate a butterfly, a
flower, or a snail, and now earnestly engaged in some new arrangement of
his flower-pots.

He would take from his own table to his study the back-bone of a hare, or
a fish's head; and he would pull out of his pocket, after a walk, a plant
or stone to be made tributary to an argument. His manuscripts were as
motley as his occupations; the workshop of a mind ever on the alert;
evidences mixed up with memorandums for his will; an interesting
discussion brought to an untimely end by the hiring of servants, the
letting of fields, sending his boys to school, reproving the refractory
members of an hospital; here a dedication, there one of his children's
exercises--in another place a receipt for cheap soup. He would amuse his
fire side by family anecdotes:--how one of his ancestors (and he was
praised as a pattern of perseverance) separated two pounds of white and
black pepper which had been accidentally mixed--_patiens pulveris_, he
might truly have added; and how, when the _Paley arms_ were wanted,
recourse was had to a family tankard which was supposed to bear them, but
which he always took a malicious pleasure in insisting had been bought at
a sale--


----------Haec est
Vita solutorum miserâ ambitione gravique;