perches, hounds, spaniels, and terriers; the upper side of the hall hung with the fox-skins of this and the last year's killing ; here and there a poll-cat intermixed; game-keepers, and hunters' poles in great abundance.

"The parlour was a great room, as properly furnished. On a great hearth, paved with brick, lay some terriers, and the choicest hounds and spaniels. Seldom but two of the great chairs had litters of young cats in them, which were not to be disturbed; he having always three or four attending him at dinner, and a little white round stick, of fourteen inches long, lying by his trencher, that he might defend such meat as he had no mind to part with to them.

"The windows, which were very large, served for places to lay his arrows, cross-bows, stone-bows, and other such like accoutrements. The corners of the room, full of the best-chose hunting and hawking-poles. An oyster-table at the lower end; which was of constant use, twice a day, all the year round. For he never failed to eat oysters, before dinner and supper, through all seasons: the neighbouring town of Pool supplied him with them.

"The upper part of the room had two small tables and a desk, on the one side of which was a Church Bible, and, on the other, the Book of Martyrs. On the tables were hawks-hoods, bells, and such like; two or three old green hats, with their crowns thrust in, so as to hold ten or a dozen eggs, which were of a pheasant kind of poultry, which he took much care of, and fed himself. In the whole of the desk were store of tobacco-pipes that had been used.

"On one side of this end of the room was the door of a closet, wherein stood the strong beer and the wine, which never came thence but in single glasses, that being the rule of the house, exactly observed. For he never exceeded in drink, or permitted it.

"On the other side was the door into an old chapel, not used for devotion. The pulpit, as the safest place, was never want

ing of a cold chine of beef, venison-pasty, gammon of bacon, or great apple-pye, with thick crust extremely baked. His table cost him not much, though it was good to eat at.

"His sports supplied all but beef and mutton; except Fridays, when he had the best of salt fish (as well as other fish) he could get; and was the day his neighbours of best quality most visited him. He never wanted a London pudding, and always sung it in with, 'My part lies therein-a.' He drank a glass or two of wine at meals; very often syrup of gillyflowers in his sack; and had always a tun glass, without feet, stood by him, holding a pint of small beer, which he often stirred with rosemary.

"He was well-natured, but soon angry; calling his servants bastards and cuckoldy knaves; in one of which he often spoke truth to his own knowledge, and sometimes in both, though of the same man. He lived to be an hundred; never lost his eyesight, but always wrote and read without spectacles; and got on horseback without help. Until past fourscore, he rode to the death of a stag as well as any."

It is very clear that this worthy personage was nothing more than a kind of beaver or badger in human shape. We imagine him haunting the neighbourhood in which he lived like a pet creature, who had acquired a certain Egyptian godship among the natives; now hunting for his fish, now for his flesh, now fawning after his uncouth fashion upon a pretty girl, and now snarling and contesting a point with his cats. We imagine him the animal principle personified; a symbol on horseback; a jolly dog sitting upright at dinner, like a hieroglyphic on a pedestal.

Buffon has a subtle answer to those who argue for the rationality of bees. He says, that the extreme order of their proceedings, and the undeviating apparent forethought with which they even anticipate and provide for a certain geometrical necessity in a part of the structure of their hives, are only additional proofs of the force of instinct. They have an instinct for the order, and an instinct for the anticipation; and they prove that

it is not reason, by never striking out anything new or different. The same thing is observable in our human animal. What would be reason or choice in another man, is justly to be set down in him to poverty of ideas. If Tasso had been asked the reason of his always wearing black, he would probably have surprised the inquirer by a series of quaint and deep observations on colour, and dignity, and melancholy, and the darkness of his fate; but if Petrarch or Boccaccio had discussed the matter with him, he might have changed it to purple. A lady, in the same manner, wears black, because it suits her complexion, or is elegant at all times, or because it is at once piquant and superior. But in spring she may choose to put on the colours of the season, and in summer to be gaudier with the butterfly. Our squire had an instinct towards the colour of green, because he saw it about him. He took it from what he lived in, like a chameleon, and never changed it, because he could live in no other sphere. We see that his green suit was never worth five pounds; and nothing, we dare say, could have induced him to let it mount up to that sum. He would have it grow upon him, if he could, like a green monkey. Thus, again, with his bowling-green. It was not penuriousness that hindered him from altering it; but he had no more idea of changing the place than the place itself. As change of habit is frightful to some men, from vivacity of affection or imagination, and the strangeness which they anticipate in the novelty, so he was never tempted out of a custom, because he had no idea of anything else. He would no more think of altering the place he burrowed in than a tortoise or a wild rabbit. He was fera naturæ,—a regular beast of prey; though he mingled something of the generosity of the lion with the lurking of the fox and the mischievous sporting of the cat. He would let other animals feed with him, only warning them off occasionally with that switch of his, instead of a claw. He had the same liberality of instinct towards the young of other creatures as we see in the hen and the goat. He would take care of their eggs, if he had

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

S

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. It 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 Mt 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