into a a plant.
In his boyhood, he is described by his sister, Mrs. Bowyear, as studious
after his kind, delighting in Mother Goose and the Seven Champions, and
not partaking much in the sports usual to such an age. He had a very
early inclination for the church, and the elements of that taste for
ecclesiastical pomp, which distinguished him in after life, appeared when
he was not more than nine or ten years old. He would put on one of his
father's shirts for a surplice, (till Mr. Sanders, the vicar, supplied
him, as Hannah did his namesake, with a little gown and cassock;) he would
then read the church service to his sister and cousins, after they had
been duly summoned by a bell tied to the banisters; preach them a sermon,
which his congregation was apt to think, in those days, somewhat of the
longest; and even, in spite of his father's remonstrances, would bury a
bird or a kitten (Parr had always a great fondness for animals) with the
rites of Christian burial. Samuel was his mother's darling; she indulged
all his whims, consulted his appetite, and provided hot suppers for him
almost from his cradle. He was her only son, and was at this time very
fair and well-favoured. Providence, however, foreseeing that at all events
vanity was to be a large ingredient in Parr's composition, sent him,
in its mercy, a fit of small-pox; and, with the same intent, perhaps,
deprived him of a parent, who was killing her son's character by kindness.
Parr never was a boy, says, somewhere, his friend and school-fellow, Dr.
Bennet. When he was about nine years old, Dr. Allen saw him sitting on the
churchyard gate at Harrow, with great gravity, whilst his school-fellows
were all at play. "Sam. why don't you play with the others?" cried Allen.
"Do not you know, sir," said he, with vast solemnity, "that I am to be a
parson?" And Parr himself used to tell of Sir W. Jones, another of his
school-fellows, that as they were one day walking together near Harrow,
Jones suddenly stopped short, and, looking hard at him, cried out, "Parr,
if you should have the good luck to live forty years, you may stand a
chance of overtaking your face." Between Bennet, Parr, and Jones, the
closest intimacy was formed; and though occasionally tried, it continued
to the last. Sir W. Jones, indeed, was soon carried, by the tide of
events, far away from the other two, and Dr. Bennet quickly shot a-head
of poor Parr in the race of life, and rose to the Irish bench.

Thes