One of the most noted manifestations of this eccentricity was but the distortion of a good quality. He had a fondness for dumb animals. He could not bear to see them suffer by any infliction,—other than that necessitated by a love of field sports, which, to an Englishman, is as natural and as necessary as mother’s milk. At length, the Parisians were scandalised by the frequent sight of a carriage, full of dogs, attended with as much state and solemnity as if it contained ‘milord’ in person. To his servants he was a most liberal master. He provided largely for the parochial service and parochial charities of his two parishes of Middle and Whitchurch (both in Shropshire). He was, occasionally, a liberal benefactor to men of recondite learning, such as meet commonly with small reward in this world.[9] But much of his life was stamped with the ineffaceable discredit of sacred functions voluntarily assumed, yet habitually discharged by proxy. On the death, in 1823, of his elder brother—who had become seventh Earl of BRIDGEWATER, under the creation of 1617, on the decease of Francis third Duke and sixth (Egerton) Earl—Francis Henry EGERTON became eighth Earl of BRIDGEWATER. But he continued to live chiefly in Paris, where he died, in April, 1829, at the age of seventy-two years. With the peerage he had inherited a very large estate, although the vast ducal property in canals had passed, as is well known, in 1803, to the LEVESON-GOWERS. Part of Lord BRIDGEWATER’S leisure at Paris was given to the composition of a largely-planned treatise on Natural Theology. But the task was far above the powers of the undertaker. He had made considerable progress, after his fashion, and part of what he had written was put superbly into type, from the press of DIDOT. Very wisely, he resolved to enable abler men to do the work more efficiently. And this was a main object of his remarkable Will. That portion of the document which eventually gave to the world the well-known ‘Bridgewater Treatises’ of CHALMERS, BUCKLAND, WHEWELL, PROUT, ROGET, and their fellows in the task, reads thus:— [Sidenote: LORD BRIDGEWATER’S BEQUESTS FOR THE PREPARATION OF TREATISES ON NATURAL THEOLOGY.]