l of the home of the Gregs.

Have you ever been to Quarry Bank? It is such a
picture of rational, happy life. Mr. Greg is quite a
gentleman; his daughters have the delightful simplicity
of people who are perfectly satisfied in their place, and
never trying to get out of it. He is rich, and he
spends just as people do not generally spend their money,
keeping a sort of open house, without pretension. If he
has more guests than the old butler can manage, he has
his maid-servants in to wait. He seldom goes out, except
on journeys, so that with the almost certainty of finding
a family party at home, a large circle of connections, and
literary people, and foreigners, and Scotch and Irish, are
constantly dropping in, knowing they cannot come amiss.
You may imagine how this sort of life makes the whole
family sit loose to all the incumbrances and hindrances
of society. They actually do not know what it is to be
formal or dull: each with their separate pursuits and
tastes, intelligent and well-informed.

Mrs. Fletcher, again, that beautiful type of feminine character alike as
maiden and mother, whose autobiography was given to the world a few
years ago, tells how the family at Quarry Bank struck and delighted her.
'We stayed a week with them,' she says, 'and admired the cultivation of
mind and refinement of manners which Mrs. Greg preserved in the midst of
a money-making and somewhat unpolished community of merchants and
manufacturers. Mr. Greg, too, was most gentlemanly and hospitable, and
surrounded by eleven clever and well-conducted children. I thought them
the happiest family group I had ever seen.'[1]

[Footnote 1: _Autobiography of Mrs. Fletcher_, p. 97. Edinburgh:
Edmonston and Douglas, 1876.]

Samuel Greg was one of thirteen children, and he in his turn became the
father of thirteen. W. R. Greg was the youngest of them. The brightness
and sweetness of his disposition procured for him even more than the
ordinary endearment of such a place in a large family. After the usual
amount of schooling, first at home under the auspices of an elder
sister, then at Leeds, and finally at Dr. Carpenter's at Bristol, in the
winter of 1826-1827 he went to the University of Edinburgh, and remained
there until the end of the session of 1828. He was a diligent student,
but we may suspect, from the turn of his pursuits on leaving the
university, that his mind worked most readily out of the academic