Waterton is thus characterised by a personal friend:--He was one of those men whose life, reaching back and retaining many characteristics of the past, contrasted the present sameness with a manner of life much more varied, but now almost forgotten. Rising always at three in the morning, he gave an hour, as he said, "to the health and preservation of the soul," and was then ready for the occupations and pursuits of the day. His conversation and manners had that charm which comes of ancestry, of ancient riches, and a polished education enlivened by a sparkling wit. In attachment to his religion he was as zealous as his great ancestor, Sir Thomas More, whose clock, from the house at Chelsea, still tells the hours at Walton Hall. His undoubting faith, and the consolations it afforded him, might, indeed, be envied by some of those who worship at other altars. His hospitality was kind and generous: a stewed carp from the lake carried you back to the good old times, and furnished a dish not soon to be forgotten. To those who knew him well there was something remarkably genial in the society of the good old squire, and his manner of receiving and bidding them adieu will be long remembered by his friends. Mr. Thackeray, in _The Newcomes_, relates of Mr. Waterton this interesting trait:--"A friend who belongs to the old religion took me, last week, into a church where the Virgin lately appeared in person to a Jewish gentleman, flashed down upon him from heaven in light and splendour celestial, and, of course, straightway converted him. My friend bade me look at the picture, and kneeling down beside me, I know, prayed with all his honest heart that the truth might shine down upon me too; but I saw no glimpse of heaven at all, I saw but a poor picture, an altar with blinking candles, a church hung with tawdry strips of red and white calico. The good, kind W. went away, humbly saying, 'That such might have happened again if Heaven so willed it.' I could not but feel a kindness and admiration for the good man. I know that his works are made to square with his faith, that he dines on a crust, lives as chastely as a hermit, and gives his all to the poor." Elegy on a Geologist. Archbishop Whately, one day, with genial humour, wrote a supposed "Elegy on Dr. Buckland," of which the following is a portion:-- "Where shall we our great Professor inter, That in peace may rest his bones? If we hew him a rocky sepulchre He'll rise and brake the stones, And examine each stratum that lies around, For he's quite in his element underground. If with mattock and spade his body we lay In the common alluvial soil, He'll start up and snatch these tools away Of his own geological toil; In a stratum so young the Professor disdains That embedded should lie his organic remains.