and, to use Mr. Listen's phrase, disappeared, and was doubtless broken
into a thousand pieces. The sound of his head, etc., dashing
successively upon the projecting masses of the chasm, had such an effect
upon the child that a serious sickness ensued, and even for many years
after his recovery he was not once seen so much as to smile.

"The joint death of both his parents, which happened not many months
after this disastrous accident, and were probably (one or both of them)
accelerated by it, threw our youth upon the protection of his maternal
great-aunt, Mrs. Sittingbourn. Of this aunt we have never heard him
speak but with expressions amounting almost to reverence. To the
influence of her early counsels and manners he has always attributed the
firmness with which, in maturer years, thrown upon a way of life
commonly not the best adapted to gravity and self-retirement, he has
been able to maintain a serious character, untinctured with the levities
incident to his profession. Ann Sittingbourn (we have seen her portrait
by Hudson) was stately, stiff, tall, with a cast of features strikingly
resembling the subject of this memoir. Her estate in Kent was spacious
and well-wooded; the house, one of those venerable old mansions which
are so impressive in childhood, and so hardly forgotten in succeeding
years. In the venerable solitudes of Charnwood, among thick shades of
the oak and beech, (this last his favorite tree,) the young Listen
cultivated those contemplative habits which have never entirely deserted
him in after-years. Here he was commonly in the summer months to be met
with, with a book in his hand,--not a play-book,--meditating. Boyle's
'Reflections' was at one time the darling volume, which in its turn was
superseded by Young's 'Night Thoughts,' which has continued its hold
upon him through life. He carries it always about him; and it is no
uncommon thing for him to be seen, in the refreshing intervals of his
occupation, leaning against a side-scene, in a sort of