It may be otherwise. If the schoolmaster is not always abroad, the antiquarian is--the moral virtuoso--who delights, metaphorically speaking, to find spots on snow, and specks in amber. This species of antiquarian, male or female, may be found in every city and village. It is a curious creature, and, in the cabinet of a malicious memory, has stowed carefully away the weak points, and the peccadilloes of the living and the dead. In its contracted receptacle, there is no room for public or private charities, nor for merits of any kind: it is capable of holding nothing but delinquencies. Nothing is more refreshing to this species of antiquarian, than any fair pretence, for opening his cabinet, and showing his precious collection. Nollikens, among his _terra cottas_, was not more adroit, in fitting the heads and members of Priapi to the trunks of fauns and satyrs, than is the ingenious character, of whom I speak, in adapting the legendary gossip, which has been told, till it is stale, of one individual, to the person of another. Such personages are, characteristically, selfish and ungenerous. It would not be a very notable miracle, if some person, of this description, pained and offended, by the trying contrast, between the munificent and charitable career of Peter Faneuil, and the extremely dry and unprofitable character of his own existence, should ransack the charnel-house of his memory, for some offensive offset, against Master Lovell's laudation of Peter. For this I can truly vouch, excepting that affair of the brandy, the commercial correspondence of Peter Faneuil--and I have read the whole volume, that remains, French and English--is highly honorable to the head and the heart of the writer. The charity of Peter Faneuil was not that clap-trap munificence, examples of which are frequently heralded, among us, in demi-stipendiary journals--it did not so truly _spring_--it _oozed_ from Peter's warm heart, continually, and constitutionally. He required no impressive hints, to be charitable--he _felt_ for the poor and needy, habitually. His letter of Sept. 19, 1738, is before me, to one of his commercial correspondents, to whom he has just then made a shipment, Mons. Thomas Bayeaux--"Inclosed you have Madame Guinneau's account, by which you are indebted to that poor widow £16, which you will do well to pay her, it being for money she advanced, for the board of you and your family. One would have thought you should have paid that, before you left the country, and not to have served the poor widow as you did." However direct, and even severe, while addressing delinquents, his French politeness never forsakes him. Such letters always conclude--"_Sir, I salute you_," or "_I kiss your hand_."