He inculcated the study of minor pleasures with so much industry, that his writings have caused him to be taken for a minor voluptuary. His special apparatus for the luxury consisted in some old cloak to put about his shoulders when cold--which he allowed to slip off while reading or writing; in a fire--“to toast his feet”--which he let out many times in the day, with as many apologies to the servant for the trouble; and in a bill of fare, which he preposterously restricted for a fancied delicacy of stomach, and a fancied poison in everything agreeable, and which he could scarcely taste for a natural dulness of palate. Unable to perceive the smell of flowers, he habitually strove to imagine it. The Epicurean in theory was something like a Stoic in practice; and he would break off an “article” on the pleasures of feasting to ease his hunger, literally, with a supper of bread; turning round to enjoy by proxy, on report, the daintier food which he had provided for others. Eyeing the meat in another’s plate, he would quote Peter Pindar-- “On my life, I could turn glutton, On such pretty-looking mutton;” but would still, with the relish of Lazarillo de Tormes, stick to his own “staff of life,” and quaff his water, jovially repeating after Armstrong, “Nought like the simple element dilutes.” Now, most excellent reader, are you in something of a condition to understand the man’s account of his own failings--his “improvidence” and his “timidity.” He had no grasp of things material; but exaggerating his own defects, he so hesitated at any arithmetical effort, that he could scarcely count. He has been seen unable to find 3_s._ 6_d._ in a drawer full of half-crowns and shillings, since he could not see the “sixpence.” Hence his stewardship was all performed by others. He laboured enormously,--making fresh work out of everything he did; for he would not mention anything, however parenthetically, without “verifying” it. Hence it is true that he had scarcely time for stewardship, unless he had neglected his work and wages as a master-workman. He saw nothing until it had presented itself to him in a sort of literary, theoretical aspect, and hence endowed his friends, all round, with fictitious characters founded on fact. One was the thrifty housewife, another the steady man of business, a third the poetic enthusiast--and so on. And he _acted_ on these estimates, until sometimes he found out his mistake, and confessed that he “had been deceived.” The discovery was sometimes as imaginary as the original estimate, and friends, whose sterling qualities he could not overrate, have seen him, for the discovery of his mistake in regard to some fancied grace, avert his eye in cold “disappointment.” He made the same supposititious discoveries and estimates with himself. His mother had the jaundice before he was born; he had unquestionably a tendency to bilious affections; in the Greek poet’s account of Hercules and