To

two letters, the one bearing date the 10th, the | 500l. a year on him. And who are you?'
other the 13th, of this present month, both asked Johnson, that talk thus liberally?"
containing great information and amusement, I am,' said the other, 'Sir Thomas Rob-
for which I promise to pay at sight my sin inson, a Yorkshire baronet.'
• Sir,' re-
cerest thanks and acknowledgments. Wit-
plied Johnson, 'if the first peer of the
ness my hand,
CHESTERFIELD.
realm were to make me such an offer, I
would show him the way down-stairs.'"

He hints, however, that Robinson is not
a good hand at business. He writes to
him:

Since you are your own steward, do not
cheat yourself, for I have known many a man
lose more by being his own steward than he
would have been robbed of by any other.
Tenants are always too hard for landlords,
especially such landlords as think they under-
stand those matters and do not; which, with
submission, may be your case.

Horace Walpole was surprised at learn-
ing of the long correspondence that had
existed between the two men, for "he
thought that Lord Chesterfield only used
Long Sir Thomas as a butt to shoot wit at.'
How good a butt he must have been is
shown by the following story told of him
by Sir John Hawkins: -

Sir Thomas Robinson was a man of the
world, or rather of the town, and a great pest
to persons of high rank or in office. He was
very troublesome to the Earl of Burlington,
and when in his visits to him he was told that
his Lordship was gone out, would desire to be
admitted to look at the clock, or to play with
a monkey that was kept in the hall, in hopes
of being sent for in to the Earl. This he had
so frequently done that all in the house were
tired of him. At length it was concerted
among the servants that he should receive a
summary answer to his usual questions; and,
accordingly, at his next coming the porter, as
soon as he had opened the gate, and without
waiting for what he had to say, dismissed him
with these words: "Sir, his Lordship is gone
out, the clock stands, and the monkey is
dead."

The showing down-stairs seems only conditional, and perhaps Long Sir Thomas was allowed to stay, for it was some years after this that Boswell found the two men together in friendly talk. Dr. Maxwell, the assistant preacher at the Temple, records how he was one day present when Robinson objected that the Irish corn laws might be prejudicial to the corn trade of England. 666 Sir Thomas,' said Johnson, 'you talk the language of a savage. What, sir, would you prevent any people from feeding themselves, if by any honest means they can do it?"" The "comparison with a savage must have cut him to the quick. Mrs. Thrale describes "the profusion of words and bows and compliments that he made," while, according to Horace Walpole, "he was alpraise seems to have been ironical, for he ways propriety itself." Yet Walpole's. gives it when he is recording one of his blundering speeches. In another letter dated October 22, 1741, writing of a ball which the baronet was going to give, "to a little girl of the Duke of Richmond's," he says, "There are already two hundred invited, from miss in bib and apron to my lord chancellor in bib and mace." A few days later he describes the party at some length: "There were an hundred and ninety-seven persons at Sir Thomas's, and yet it was so well conducted that nobody felt a crowd. He had taken off all his doors, and so separated the old and the young that neither were inconvenienced with the other. The ball began at eight; each man danced one minuet with his partner, and then began country dances. There were four-and-twenty couple, divided into twelve and twelve; each set danced two dances, and then retired into another room, while the other set took their two, and so alternately. . . We danced till four, then had tea and coffee, and came home." A month later he writes of a second hall, also given by Sir Thomas, at which he got a violent headache, and with good reason too. ball broke up at three; but Lincoln, Lord Holderness, Lord Robert Sutton, young Churchill, and a dozen more grew jolly, stayed till seven in the morning, and drank thirty-two bottles." Robinson must have been given to hospitality, for eleven

Dr. Doran, in his "Life of Mrs. Montagu,' "whose cousin Robinson was, quotes some lines which show that he had the reputation of a parasite :

'a

You I love, my dearest life,
More than Georgey does his wife;
More than Carlisle those who cheat him,
More than Long Tom those who treat him.
Hawkins describes him further as ""
specious but empty man, whose talent was
flattery." Lord Chesterfield, he says, sent
him to Johnson "to apologize for his lord-
ship's treatment of him, and to make him
tenders of his future friendship and pa-
tronage. He was profuse in his commen-
dations of Johnson and his writings, and
declared that, were his circumstances
other than they were, himself would settle

"The

years later Walpole writes: "Did you hear | For a Duke of Normandy to affect a desire Captain Hotham's bon-mot on Sir Thomas of playing with a nobleman's monkey Robinson's making an assembly from the top of his house to the bottom? He said he wondered so many people would go to Sir Thomas's, as he treated them all de haut en bas." On one occasion Walpole attacks him in words which might be taken as a motto by the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Monuments. Robinson had persuaded the possessor of Pope's garden "to improve it." "It is a pity," continues Walpole, "that they who love to display taste will not be content with showing their genius without making alterations, and then we should have more samples of the styles of different ages."

would be, indeed, a sad falling off. It was
perhaps in remembrance of the glorious
position which he for this one day held
that he was buried in that abbey which
had seen him in all his greatness. There
can be little doubt that Fielding has a
laugh at him in the account that he gives
of the cudgel with which Joseph Andrews
came to the rescue of Parson Adams,
when he was attacked by the squire's
hounds. "It was a cudgel which his fa-
ther had of his grandfather, to whom.a
mighty strong man of Kent had given it
for a present in that day when he broke
three heads on the stage.
On its head
was engraved a nose and chin, which
might have been mistaken for a pair of
nutcrackers. The learned have imagined
it designed to represent the Gorgon; but
it was, in fact, copied from the face of a
certain long English baronet of infinite
wit, humor, and gravity."

Southey five-and-thirty years after his death visited Rokeby Hall, which had once been his property. Long Sir Thomas," he writes, "found a portrait of Richardson in the house. Thinking Mr. Richardson a very unfit personage to be suspended in effigy among lords, ladies, and baronets, he ordered the painter to put him on the star and blue riband, and then christened the picture Sir Robert Walpole. This, however, is not the most extraordinary picture in the room. That is one of Sir T.'s intended improvements, representing the river, which now flows over the finest rocky bed I ever beheld, metamorphosed by four dams into a piece of water as smooth and as still as a canal, and elevated by the same operation so as to appear at the end of a smooth-shaven green."

Long Sir Thomas may have thought that he had some kind of a family claim to taste, for his brother was Archbishop Robinson of Armagh, whose name is inscribed on the Canterbury Gate of Christchurch, Oxford, as the chief contributor to the restoration of that part of the house. Richard Cumberland, the dramatist, speaks of him as a prelate "who left many noble monuments of his munificence in brick and stone." He was as long as his brother, if not indeed longer; for Čum- | berland calls him "a colossal man." Another brother, Sir William, imitated the archbishop in everything, even in the size of his shoes. "With the pleasing consciousness of putting on the same fraternal shoe, he had not by many degrees the same foot to put into that enormous case, and so was fain to shove it on before him, like a boat upon dry land." Though his constitution was altogether different, "yet he followed step by step the same regimen, observed the same diet, took the same physic, swallowed the same number of rhubarb pills, and fought off the bile with raw eggs and mutton broth, mixed up with Muscavado sugar." Cumberland describes how the archbishop used to go to the cathedral of Armagh in a chariot drawn by six horses, with three footmen behind, and how he entered by the great western door in high prelatical state. In person he was one of the finest men that could be seen. Perhaps Long Sir Thomas was somewhat stately too, for he was selected at the coronation of George III. to represent "in proper mantle "the Duke of Normandy. In the procession he and a knight who represented the Duke of OLD AGE IN ANIMALS. Aquitaine, following next to the Arch- STATISTICIANS assure us that the mean bishop of Canterbury, advanced just in duration of life in man has increased by front of the queen. We hope that it was fully seven years in the last half-century. before he acted this noble part that he Whether our domesticated animals share paid his calls on the Earl of Burlington. | in this advance is a point not easily as

With this anecdote our store is exhausted. We live, however, in the hope that further researches may be rewarded by further discoveries, and that we may some day or other be able to write a continuation of the history of Long Sir Thomas Robinson.

From St. James's Gazette.

1

certainable; though they must certainly | ago had a ring through its lower jaw, on
benefit from the greater care generally which it was recorded that the bearer was
bestowed upon them, and from the in- placed in a particular water in 1618. This
creased efforts made to understand and appears hardly credible; but there is little
supply their wants. The ancients were doubt that many carp have lived for up-
inclined to attribute length of days to such wards of a hundred hears.
beasts or birds as they specially venerated;
but fabulous as many of their assumptions
doubtless were, they yet seem to have
been founded upon a true recognition of
the classes or types of animals which often
attain to a great age.

66

A notice lately appeared of the death of a brown water-spaniel at the age of twenty-eight years. She had belonged to the same owner from a puppy, and died literally of "sheer old age.' A few months before, a cat died at the age of twenty-two Ravens, parrots, and among fishes the years and two months. These are very carp, have in modern times gone far to unusual ages, though it is probable that justify the former belief in their longevity. some individuals have lived still longer. There is at the present time in the Zoo- Herbivorous animals are generally thought logical Gardens of Philadelphia a cockatoo to outlive carnivorous ones; and of the known to be above eighty-five years old, former class those dedicated to labor the bird being still sprightly and thriving appear to furnish the largest number of very garrulous and very cross." Until instances of longevity. Two years ago a some two years ago the oldest inhabitant donkey died at Cromarty that was known of our own collection was a black Vassa to be at least one hundred and six years parrot from Madagascar, whish died after a old. It could be traced back to the year residence of fifty-four years in the Regent's 1779, when, at an unknown age, it came Park gardens. This was an adult bird into the hands of the then Ross of Crowhen received there, but its age at that marty; and it lived in the same family, time was unknown. Another parrot died "hale and hearty," until a kick from a last year in Paris at the reputed age of horse ended its career. No horse is known one hundred and three years; and since to have attained to anything like such an it was handed down by will to several age as this; but a few have lived to ages successive owners, its longevity may be varying from forty to fifty years. A faaccepted as a fact fully established. In mous old barge-horse died at Warrington France ravens have been known to live in his sixty-second year; and the oldest more than a hundred years; and there is horse known in New York was, until quite one well-authenticated instance of an oc- recently, doing steady work there at thirtytogenarian pelican. Geese are naturally eight years of age. A few months ago, a long-lived family, and there are several also, a mule forty-six years old died at records of birds attaining to sixty or sev- Philadelphia. enty years. A skylark is known to have lived twenty-four years in a cage; and the death of a ring-dove was lately chronicled which had lived twenty-six years in confinement.

Obviously there can be but few reliable data for determining the average ages of wild animals; and our nearest approximations must be founded upon the observation of similar creatures in a state of captivity. Some of the reptiles undoubtedly live very long. Gilbert White, who had personal knowledge of a tortoise thirty years old, records the tradition of another supposed to be a hundred. Our knowledge of the duration of certain forms of insect life is very inadequate; and it was a genuine surprise to most of us to hear that Sir John Lubbock had been on friendly terms with a "queen ant" for fourteen years.

Carp are commonly regarded as the patriarchs of fresh-water fish, though there is no actual proof that they outlive the members of some other species. Last year the famous lake on the Duke of Newcastle's estate at Clumber, which had not been emptied for two hundred years, was drained off, when thousands of pike were found, some of which from their enormous size were probably of unusual age; but in the absence of means of identification it is impossible to speak positively on this Of all aged animals the horse and the point. The extreme tameness and docil dog appeal most nearly to human symity of carp led to the fashion of keeping pathies. It is not merely that they have them as pets, in which condition particular been our faithful servants and friends, but individuals came under closer scrutiny; there is a gravity, and almost a dignity, in and the records of very aged fish-from their bearing which is very touching. one to two hundred years old are nu- Many agencies are now at work for teachmerous. One taken in Germany a yearing the policy as well as the duty of kind

ness to animals; and of these, the sight | profit. The care of our four-footed friends of an old servitor loyally bestowed in pad-in their declining years may furnish many dock or kennel is not the least instructive. valuable hints for the treatment of their Nor need a charge of this kind be without still serviceable fellows.

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