One of the neighbouring justices was a large, square-built, heavy person, with a huge head, a wide mouth, little eyes, and a slender proportion of intellect. Him he set down for a hippopotamus. A brother magistrate of the Major's had been a goose, beyond all dispute. There was even proof of the fact; for it was perfectly well remembered that he had been born web-fingered. All those persons who habitually sit up till night is far spent, and as regularly pass the best hours of the morning in bed, he supposed to have been bats, night-birds, night-prowling beasts, and insects whose portion of active life has been assigned to them during the hours of darkness. One indication of this was, that candle-light could not have such attractions for them unless they had been moths. The dog was frequently detected in all its varieties, from the lap-dog, who had passed into the whipper-snapper _petit-maître_, and the turnspit, who was now the bandy-legged baker's boy,—to the Squire's eldest son, who had been a lurcher,—the Butcher, who had been a bulldog, and so continued still in the same line of life;—Lord A——'s domestic chaplain, harmless, good-natured, sleek, obsequious, and as fond of ease, indulgence and the fire-side, as when he had been a parlour spaniel; Sir William B——'s huntsman, who exercised now the whip which he had felt when last upon four legs, and who was still an ugly hound, though staunch; and the Doctor's own man, Barnaby, whom, for steadiness, fidelity and courage, he pronounced to have been a true old English mastiff, and one of the best of his kind. Chloris had been a lily. You saw it in the sickly delicacy of her complexion. Moreover she toiled not, neither did she spin. A young lady, in whose family he was perfectly familiar, had the singular habit of sitting always upon one or other foot, which as she sat down she conveyed so dexterously into the seat of her chair, that no one who was not previously acquainted with her ways, could possibly perceive the movement. Upon her mother's observing one day that this was a most unaccountable peculiarity, the Doctor replied, “No, madam! I can account for it to my own entire satisfaction. Your daughter was a bird of some gentle and beautiful species, in her last stage of existence; in that state she used always to draw up one leg when at rest. The habits that we acquire in our pre-existent state, continue with us through many stages of our progress; your daughter will be an Angel in her next promotion, and then, if Angels close their eyes in slumber, she will sleep with her head under her wing.” The landlady of the White Lion had been a cabbage, a blue-bottle fly, a tame duck, and a bacon pig.