mind of a pike when he bit, and when he refused to bite; or he would
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 misera ambitione gravique;

the life of a man far more happily employed than in the composition of
political pamphlets, or in the nurture of political discontent. Nay,
when his friend Mr. Carlyle is about going out with Lord Elgin to
Constantinople, the very headquarters of despotism, we do not perceive,
amongst the multitude of most characteristic hints and queries which
Paley addresses to him, a single fling at the Turk, or a single hope
expressed that the day was not very far distant when the Cossacks would
be permitted to erect the standard of liberty in his capital.

I will do your visitation for you (Mr. Carlyle was chancellor of the
diocese,) in case of your absence, with the greatest pleasure--it is
neither a difficulty nor a favour.

Observanda--1. Compare every thing with English and Cumberland scenery:
e.g., rivers with Eden, groves with Corby, mountains with Skiddaw; your
sensations of buildings, streets, persons