to the age of threescore,) and for
cheerfulness of temper, as for the oddities which made him a
laughing-stock for Professor Wilson and the reprobates of "Blackwood," a
prodigious myth for the "Edinburgh" and "Quarterly," and a sort of
Cocklane ghost for Sydney Smith, Hazlitt, Captain Parry, Tom Moore, and
Lord Byron.

His "Benthamee" was believed to be a language he had invented for
himself, and quite incapable of being understood, or even deciphered, by
any but a thorough-going disciple, such as Dr., now Sir John, Bowring,
James Mill, the author of "British India," John Stuart Mill, the two
Austins, or George Grote, the banker and historian of Greece.

"Ah," said Mrs. Wheeler, a strong-minded, clever woman, the Mary
Wollstonecraft of her day, on hearing that I had been asked to the
"Hermitage" of Queen-Square Place by Mr. Bentham,--"Ah, you have no idea
of what is before you! I wonder you are not afraid."

"Afraid, my dear Madam! Of what should I be afraid?"

"Afraid of being left alone with him after dinner. He cannot bear
contradiction. The queerest old man alive. One of his most intimate
friends told me that he was undoubtedly deranged, mad as a March hare
upon some subjects, and a monomaniac upon others. Do you know that he
keeps a relay of young men, thoroughly trained for the work, to follow
him round all day and pick up his droppings,--or what his followers call
'sibylline leaves,'--bits of paper, that is, written all over with
cabalistic signs, which no mortal could ever hope to decipher without a
long apprenticeship? These 'leaves' he scatters round him right and
left, while on the trot through his large, beautiful garden, or, if in
the house, while taking his 'post-prandial' vibration,--the after-dinner
walk through a narrow passageway running between a raised platform in
what he calls his 'workshop,' and the outer partition. Here he labors
day after day, and year after year, at codification, without stopping to
draw a long breath, or even to look up, so afraid is he of what may
happen to the world, if he should be taken away before it is all
finished. And here, on this platform, the table for one guest, two
secretaries, and himself is always set, and he never has more than one
guest at a time."

Extravagant and laughable as all this appeared to me at the time, I
found truth enough at the bottom, before six months were over, to
justify many of the drollest caricatures.

That Mr. Bentham's minutes wer