agreeably to the good old custom of our ancestors, he would frequently in the summer, if he was disengaged from business, lie down and bask in the sun; during which time some author was read to him, while he took notes and made extracts, for out of every book he read he made extracts; indeed it was a maxim of his, that ‘no book was so bad but some good might be got out of it.’ When this was over, he generally took a cold bath, then some slight refreshment and a little nap. After this, as if it had been a new day, he studied till supper-time, when a book was again read to him, from which he would take down running notes. I remember once when his reader had mis-pronounced a word, one of my uncle’s friends at the table made him go back to where the word was and repeat it; upon which my uncle said to his friend, ‘You understood it, didn’t you?’ ‘Yes,’ said the other. ‘Why then,’ said he, ‘did you make him go over it again? We have lost more than ten lines by this interruption.’ Such an economist he was of time! In the summer he used to rise from supper by daylight, and in winter as soon as it was dark: a rule he observed as strictly as if it had been a law of the state. Such was his manner of life amid the bustle and turmoil of the town: but in the country his whole time was devoted to study, except only when in the bath. When I say in the bath I mean while he was in the water, for all the while he was being rubbed and wiped, he was employed either in hearing some book read to him or in dictating himself. In going about anywhere, as though he were disengaged from all other business, he applied his mind wholly to that single pursuit. Always by his side was a short-hand[1] writer, with book and tablets, who, in the winter, wore a particular sort of warm gloves, that the sharpness of the weather might not occasion any interruption to my uncle’s studies: and for the same reason, when in Rome, he was always carried in a chair. I recollect his once taking me to task for walking. ‘You need not,’ he said, ‘lose these hours.’ For he looked upon every hour as lost that was not given to study. Through this extraordinary application he found time to compose the several treatises I have mentioned, besides one hundred and sixty volumes of extracts which he left me in his will, consisting of a kind of common-place, written on both sides, in a very small hand, which renders the collection doubly voluminous. He used himself to tell us that when he was comptroller of the revenue in Spain, he could have sold these manuscripts to Largius Licinus for four hundred thousand sesterces ($16,000), and then the collection was not so extensive as now. When you consider the books he has read, and the volumes he has written, are you not inclined to suspect that he never was engaged in public duties or was ever in the confidence of his prince? On the other hand, when you are told how indefatigable he was in his studies, are you not inclined