"His house was perfectly of the old fashion, in the midst of a large park well stocked with deer, and near the house rabbits to serve his kitchen; many fish ponds; great store of wood and timber; a bowl. ing green in it, long, but narrow, and full of high ridges; it being never levelled since it was plowed: they used round sand bowls; and it had a banqueting house like a stand, a large one, built in a tree.

"He kept all manner of sport hounds, that run buck, fox, hare, otter, and badger; and hawks, long and short wing'd. He had all sorts of nets for fish; he had a walk in the New Forest; and in the manor of Christ Church: this last supplied him with red deer, sea and river fish. And indeed all his neighbours' grounds and royalties were free to him; who bestowed all his time on these sports, but what he borrowed, to caress his neighbours' wives and daughters; there being not a woman, in all his walks, of the degree of a yeoman's wife, and under the age of 40, but it was extremely her fault, if he was not inti mately acquainted with her. This made him very popular; always speaking kindly to the husband, brother, or father, who was to boot For very welcome to his house whenever he came.

There he found beef, pudding, and small beer, in great plenty; house not so neatly kept as to shame him or his dusty shoes; the great hall strewed with marrow bones, full of hawks 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 four. teen 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. 3. On the tablss 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 e took m 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 saf safest place, was never wanting 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! pert eyes therein-a." He drank a glass or two of wine at meals; very often syrup of gilly flowers 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.pn

"He was well natured, but soon angry; calling his servants bastards and cuckoldly 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 it is s not reason, by never striking out any thing 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 enquirer 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 chuse 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 cameleon, and never changed it because he could live in no other sphere. We see

T

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 any thing else. He would no more think of altering the place he burrowed in, than a tortoise or a wild rabbit. He was feræ 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 badger-like. 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 :- wen he is viong's nequ B What hawkis sitten on the perch above!

What houndis liggen on the floor adown.

Then the marrow-bones, the noise, and, to a delicate ancle, 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 any thing 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 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 he was, both selfish and social, can hardly be held respon

stincts asuch 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 shewed 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 entirely gross and superficial,

without sentiment, without choice,

in it beyond one of his hounds. 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 40," was to him a desirable object. The most loveable 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. Spit

In short, to be candid on all sides with the very earthly memory of the Honourable Mr. 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 f 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 so 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 to unite both, that we may learn how to produce a human being more enviable than either the healthiest of foxhunters 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 know 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 virtue, and adds to the severity of the last age all the freedom and ease of the present. 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 entertainment. 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 the schemes and plans which they thought beautiful, though inimitablo. 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 be very easily fixed on her, only, by all that know her, but I dare say she will be the last to find it out."-TATLER, No. 42, July 16, 1709.

This character was written when Lady Elizabeth was twenty-eight. She passed the rest of her life agreeably to it, relieving families, giving annuities, contributing to the maintenance of schools and universityscholars, 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 country women,

Miss Hays informs us, that the close of this excellent person's life was as suffering as it was patient. An accidental contusion in her bosom

m 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 biograpers. "Her ladyship,"