Yet these displays were alien to the nature of Pius; and, even through the tyranny of custom, he had been so little changed, that to the last he continued to turn aside, as often as the public ritual of his duty allowed him, from these fierce spectacles to the gentler amusements of fishing and hunting. His taste and his affections naturally carried him to all domestic pleasures of a quiet nature. A walk in a shrubbery or along a piazza, enlivened with the conversation of a friend or two, pleased him better than all the court festivals; and among festivals, or anniversary celebrations, he preferred those which, like the harvest-home or feast of the vintagers, whilst they sanctioned a total carelessness and dismissal of public anxieties, were at the same time colored by the innocent gaiety which belongs to rural and to primitive manners. In person this emperor was tall and dignified (_staturâ elevatâ decorus;_) but latterly he stooped; to remedy which defect, that he might discharge his public part with the more decorum, he wore stays. [Footnote: In default of whalebone, one is curious to know of what they were made:--thin tablets of the linden-tree, it appears, were the best materials which the Augustus of that day could command.] Of his other personal habits little is recorded, except that, early in the morning, and just before receiving the compliments of his friends and dependents, (_salutatores_,) or what in modern phrase would be called his _levee_, he took a little plain bread, (_panem siccum comedit_,) that is, bread without condiments or accompaniments of any kind, by way of breakfast. In no meal has luxury advanced more upon the model of the ancients than in this: the dinners (_cænæ_) of the Romans were even more luxurious, and a thousand times more costly, than our own; but their breakfasts were scandalously meagre; and, with many men, breakfast was no professed meal at all. Galen tells us that a little bread, and at most a little seasoning of oil, honey, or dried fruits, was the utmost breakfast which men generally allowed themselves: some indeed drank wine after it, but this was far from being a common practice. [Footnote: There is, however, a good deal of delusion prevalent on such subjects. In some English cavalry regiments, the custom is for the privates to take only one meal a day, which of course is dinner; and by some curious experiments it has appeared that such a mode of life is the healthiest. But at the same time, we have ascertained that the quantity of porter or substantial ale drunk in these regiments does virtually allow many meals, by comparison with the washy tea breakfasts of most Englishmen.]