a mind; or furnish them with milk. His very body was badgerlike. It was "very low, very strong, and very active ;" and he had a coarse fell of hair. A good housewife might evidently call his house a kennel, without being abusive. What the ladies of the Huntingdon family thought, if ever they came to it, we do not know; but next to hearing such a fellow as Squire Western talk, must have been the horror of his human kindred in treading those menageries, his hall and parlour. They might turn the lines of Chaucer into an exclamation :—

"What hawkis sitten on the perch above!
What houndis liggen on the floor adown!"

Then the marrow-bones, the noise, and, to a delicate ankle, the
sense of danger! Conceive a timid stranger, not very welcome,
obliged to pass through the great hall. The whole animal world
is up.
The well-mouthed hounds begin barking, the mastiff
bays, the terriers snap, the hawks sidle and stare, the poultry
gobble, the cats growl and up with their backs. At last, the
Hastings makes his appearance, and laughs like a goblin.

Three things are specially observable in our hero: first, that his religion as well as literature was so entirely confined to faith as to allow him to turn his household-chapel into a larder, and do anything else he pleased, short of not ranking the Bible and "Book of Martyrs" with his other fixtures; second, that he carried the prudential instinct above mentioned to a pitch very unusual in a country-squire, who can rarely refrain from making extremes meet with humanity in this instance; and third, that his proneness to the animal part of love, never finding him in a condition to be so brutal as drinking renders a gallant of this sort, left himself as well as others in sufficient good-humour, not only to get him forgiven by the females, but to act kindly, and be tolerated by the men. He was as temperate in his liquor as one of his cats, just drinking to quench his thirst, and leaving off when he had enough. This perhaps was partly owing to his rank, which did not render it necessary to his importance

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to be emulous with his bottle among squires. As to some grave questions connected with the promiscuous nature of his amours, an animal so totally given up to his instincts as he was, both selfish and social, can hardly be held responsible upon such points; though they are worth the consideration of those who in their old age undertake to be moral as well as profligate. If Mr Hastings's notion was good and even useful, so far as it showed the natural good-humour of that passion in human beings, where sickness or jealousy is out of the question, in every other respect it was as poor and paltry as can be. There was not a single idea in it beyond one of his hounds. was entirely gross and superficial, without sentiment, without choice, without a thousand sensations of pleasure and the return of it, without the least perception of a beauty beyond the mere absence of age. The most idiotical scold in the village, "under forty," was to him a desirable object. The most lovable woman in the world, above it, was lost upon him. Such lovers do not even enjoy the charms they suppose. They do not see a twentieth part of its very external graces. They criticise beauty in the language of a horse-jockey; and the jockey, or the horse himself, knows just as much about it as they.

In short, to be candid on all sides with the very earthly memory of the Honourable M1 William Hastings, we look upon a person of his description to be a very good specimen of the animal part of human nature, and chiefly on this account, that the animal preserves its health. There indeed it has something to say for itself; nor must we conceal our persuasion that upon this ground alone the Hastings must have had sensations in the course of his life which many an intellectual person might envy. If his perceptions were of a vague sort, they must have been exquisitely clear and unalloyed. He must have had all the pleasure from the sunshine and the fresh air that a healthy body without a mind in it can have; and we may guess, from the days of childhood, what those feelings may resemble, in their pleasantness as well as vagueness. At the

age of a hundred he was able to read and write without spectacles; not better, perhaps, than he did at fifteen, but as well. At a hundred, he was truly an old boy, and no more thought of putting on spectacles than an eagle. Why should he? His blood had run clear for a century with exercise and natural living. He had not baked it black and "heavy thick" over a fire, and dimmed the windows of his perception with the smoke.

But he wanted a soul to turn his perceptions to their proper account?-He did so. Let us then, who see more than he did, contrive to see fair-play between body and mind. It is by observing the separate extremes of perfection, to which body and mind may arrive, in those who do not know how to unite both, that we may learn how to produce a human being more enviable than either the healthiest of fox-hunters or the most unearthly of saints. It is remarkable, that the same ancient family which, among the variety and fineness of its productions, put forth this specimen of bodily humanity, edified the world not long after with as complete a specimen of the other half of human nature. Mr William Hastings's soul seems to have come too late for his body, and to have remained afterwards upon earth in the shape of his fair kinswoman, the Lady Elizabeth Hastings, daughter of Theophilus, seventh Earl of Huntingdon. An account of her follows that of her animal kinsman, and is a most extraordinary contrast. This is the lady who is celebrated by Sir Richard Steele in the Tatler, under the name of Aspasia,- -a title which must have startled her a little. But with the elegance of the panegyric she would have found it hard not to be pleased, notwithstanding her modesty. "These ancients would be as much astonished to see in the same age so illustrious a pattern to all who love things praiseworthy as the divine Aspasia. Methinks I now see her walking in her garden like our first parent, with unaffected charms, before beauty had spectators, and bearing celestial, conscious virtue in her aspect. Her countenance is the lively picture of her

mind, which is the seat of honour, truth, compassion, knowledge, and innocence :

'There dwells the scorn of vice, and pity too.'

In the midst of the most ample fortune, and veneration of all that beheld and knew her, without the least affectation, she consults retirement, the contemplation of her own being, and that Supreme Power which bestowed it. Without the learning of schools, or knowledge of a long course of arguments, she goes on in a steady course of uninterrupted piety and virtue, and adds to the severity and privacy of the last age all the freedom and ease of this. The language and mien of a Court she is possessed of in the highest degree; but the simplicity and humble thoughts of a cottage are her more welcome entertainments. Aspasia is a female philosopher, who does not only live up to the resignation of the most retired lives of the ancient sages, but also to the schemes and plans which they thought beautiful, though inimitable. This lady is the most exact economist, without appearing busy; the most strictly virtuous, without tasting the praise of it; and shuns applause with as much industry as others do reproach. This character is so particular that it will very easily be fixed on her only, by all that know her; but I dare say she will be the last that finds it out." (Tatler, No. 42, July 16, 1709.)

This character was written when Lady Elizabeth was twentyeight. She passed the rest of her life agreeably to it, relieving families, giving annuities, contributing to the maintenance of schools and university-scholars, and all the while behaving with extraordinary generosity to her kindred, and keeping up a noble establishment. Those whom such a description incites to know more of her, will find a good summary of her way of life in Miss Hays's "Female Biography,”—a work, by the way, which contrives to be at once deferential and liberal, and ought to be in the possession of all her intelligent countrywomen.

Miss Hays informs us that the close of this excellent person's

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life was as suffering as it was patient. An accidental contusion in her bosom, at an early period of life, had left the seeds of a cancer, which for many years she disregarded. About a year and a half before her death, she was obliged to undergo an amputation of the part affected; which she did with a noble and sweet fortitude, described in a very touching manner by another of her biographers. "Her ladyship," he tells us, derwent this painful operation with surprising patience and resolution she showed no reluctancy; no struggle or contention, or even any complaint, did she make; only, indeed, towards the end of the operation, she drew such a sigh as any compassionate reader may when he hears this." This is one of the truest and most pathetic things we ever remember to have read. Unfortunately, the amputation, though it promised well for a time, did no good at last. The disorder returned with increased malignity, and, after submitting to it with her usual patience, and exhorting her household and friends upon her death-bed in a high strain of enthusiasm, she expired on the 22d December 1739, in the fifty-seventh year of her age. "Her character in miniature,” says the biographer just quoted, "is this. She was a lady of the exactest breeding, of fine intellectual endowments, filled with divine wisdom, renewed in the spirit of her mind, fired with the love of her Creator, a friend to all the world, mortified in soul and body, and to every thing that is earthly, and a little lower than the angels." He has a mysterious anecdote of her in the course of his account. "The following remarkable circumstance happened to her in her youth:-A young lady, of less severity of manners than herself, invited her once to an entertainment over a romance, and very dear did she pay for it: what evil tinctures she took from it I cannot tell; but this I can, that the remembrance of it would now and then annoy her spirit down into declining life." Miss Hays concludes the memoir in the "Female Biography" with informing us that "she was fond of her pen, and frequently employed herself in writing; but, previous to her death, destroyed the greater part of her papers.