The Rev. Peter Twaddleton, Master of Arts, and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, for we must introduce him in due form, was about fifty-two years of age, twenty of which he had spent at Cambridge, as a resident Fellow of Jesus College. He had not possessed the vicarage of Overton above eight or nine years; and, although its value never exceeded a hundred and eighty pounds a year, so limited were his wants, and so frugal his habits, that he generally contrived to save a considerable sum out of his income, in order that he might devote it to purposes of charity and benevolence: his charity, however, was not merely of the hand, but of the heart; distress was unknown in his village; he fed the hungry, nursed the sick, and cheered the unfortunate; his long collegiate residence had imparted to his mind several peculiar traits, and a certain stiffness of address and quaintness of manner which at once distinguish the recluse from the man of the world; in short, as Shakspeare expresses it, “_he was not hackneyed in the ways of men_.” His face was certainly the very reverse to everything that could be considered “good-looking,” and yet, when he smiled, there was an animation that redeemed the irregularity of his angular features; so benevolent was the expression of his countenance, that it was impossible not to feel that sentiment of respect and admiration which the presence of a superior person is wont to inspire; but his superiority was rather that of the heart than of the head; not that we would insinuate any deficiency in intellect, but that his moral excellencies were so transcendent as to throw into the shade all those mental qualities which he possessed in common with the world. He entertained a singular aversion to the mathematics, a prejudice which we are inclined to refer to his disappointment in the senate-house; for, although he was known at Cambridge as one of those “pale beings in spectacles and cotton stockings,” commonly called “_reading men_,” yet, after all his exertions, he only succeeded in obtaining the “_wooden spoon_,” an honour which devolves upon the last of the “_junior optimes_.” Whether his failure arose from an exuberant or a deficient genius, or, to speak _phrenologically_, from an excess in his _number of bumps_, or a defect in his _bump of numbers_, we are really unable to state, never having had an opportunity of verifying our suspicions by a manual examination of his cranium; he was, however, well read in the classics, and so devoted to the works of Virgil that he never lost an opportunity of quoting his favourite poet; and it must be admitted, that, although these quotations so generally pervaded his conversation as to become irksome, they were sometimes apposite, and now and then even witty. But notwithstanding the delight which he experienced in a _lusus verborum_ in a learned language, of such contradictory materials was he compossed, that his antipathy to an English pun was extravagant and ridiculous.