as a brisk old
bachelor-looking little man; the wit and superannuated beau of a large
family connection, and the Squire's factotum. I found him, as usual,
full of bustle; with a thousand petty things to do, and persons to
attend to, and in chirping good-humour; for there are few happier
beings than a busy idler; that is to say, a man who is eternally busy
about nothing.

I visited him, the morning after my arrival, in his chamber, which is
in a remote corner of the mansion, as he says he likes to be to
himself, and out of the way. He has fitted it up in his own taste, so
that it is a perfect epitome of an old bachelor's notions of
convenience and arrangement. The furniture is made up of odd pieces
from all parts of the house, chosen on account of their suiting his
notions, or fitting some corner of his apartment; and he is very
eloquent in praise of an ancient elbow-chair, from which he takes
occasion to digress into a censure on modern chairs, as having
degenerated from the dignity and comfort of high-backed antiquity.

Adjoining to his room is a small cabinet, which he calls his study.
Here are some hanging shelves, of his own construction, on which are
several old works on hawking, hunting, and farriery, and a collection
or two of poems and songs of the reign of Elizabeth, which he studies
out of compliment to the Squire; together with the Novelist's
Magazine, the Sporting Magazine; the Racing Calendar, a volume or two
of the Newgate Calendar, a book of peerage, and another of heraldry.

His sporting dresses hang on pegs in a small closet; and about the
walls of his apartment are hooks to hold his fishing-tackle, whips,
spurs, and a favourite fowling-piece, curiously wrought and inlaid,
which he inherits from his grandfather. He has, also, a couple of old
single-keyed flutes, and a fiddle which he has repeatedly patched and
mended himself, affirming it to be a veritable Cremona, though I have
never heard him extract a single note from it that was not enough to
make one's blood run cold.

From this little nest his fiddle will often be heard, in the stillness
of mid-day, drowsily sawing some long-forgotten tune; for he prides
himself on having a choice collection of good old English music, and
will scarcely have any thing to do with modern composers. The time,
however, at which his musical powers are of most use, is now and then
of an evening, when he plays for the children to dance in the hall,
and he passes amo