I found him, as Miss Grace Ellis had described, active, vigorous, and intelligent; his stature short, his face well-formed, his eyes keen and bright. I was first shown into his little parlour downstairs, furnished with his books and some of his instruments; I was then taken to his tiny room upstairs, where he had his big reflecting telescope, by means of which he had seen, through the chamber window, the snowcap of Mars. He is so fond of philology that I found he had no fewer than twenty-six dictionaries, all bought out of his own earnings. "I am fond of all knowledge," he said--"of Reuben, Dan, and Issachar; but I have a favourite, a Benjamin, and that is Astronomy. I would sell all of them into Egypt, but preserve my Benjamin." His story is briefly as follows:-- "I was born at Bryngwyn Bach, Anglesey, in 1818, and I am sixty-five years old. I got the little education I have, when a boy. Owen Owen, who was a cousin of my mother's, kept a school at a chapel in the village of Dwyrain, in Anglesey. It was said of Owen that he never had more than a quarter of a year's schooling, so that he could not teach me much. I went to his school at seven, and remained with him about a year. Then he left; and some time afterwards I went for a short period to an old preacher's school, at Brynsieneyn chapel. There I learnt but little, the teacher being negligent. He allowed the children to play together too much, and he punished them for slight offences, making them obstinate and disheartened. But I remember his once saying to the other children, that I ran through my little lesson 'like a coach.' However, when I was about twelve years old, my father died, and in losing him I lost almost all the little I had learnt during the short periods I had been at school. Then I went to work for the farmers. "In this state of ignorance I remained for years, until the time came when on Sunday I used to saddle the old black mare for Cadwalladr Williams, the Calvinist Methodist preacher, at Pen Ceint, Anglesey; and after he had ridden away, I used to hide in his library during the sermon, and there I learnt a little that I shall not soon forget. In that way I had many a draught of knowledge, as it were, by stealth. Having a strong taste for music, I was much attracted by choral singing; and on Sundays and in the evenings I tried to copy out airs from different books, and accustomed my hand a little to writing. This tendency was, however, choked within me by too much work with the cattle, and by other farm labour. In a word, I had but little fair weather in my search for knowledge. One thing enticed me from another, to the detriment of my plans; some fair Eve often standing with an apple in hand, tempting me to taste of that.