He took extreme interest in all new mechanical projects, but seldom indulged in the practical part of them. In wine-making he was once a very experimentalist, and studied every line of Macculloch and unripe fruit; next, he turned over every inch of his garden, analyzed the soil _à la_ Davy, and _salted_ all his growing crops. His cogitative habits led him to take long walks in the country, and he soon flew from horticultural chemistry to real farming; and about the same time took to road making and macadamization, and became a surveyor of the highways. But the trustees wanting to macadamize the miserably pitched street of the town, he bethought him of dust in summer and mud in winter, and drew up a long memorial to the lords of the soil, remonstrating with them on their impolitic conduct; but all in vain. It is curious, however, to reflect that what the people of a country town about ten years ago thought a curse to their roads should now be adopted in many of the principal London Streets. The last we heard of our bookseller's hobbies, was that he had bought the lease of a house for the sake of the large garden attached to it, and here, like Evelyn in his _Elysium Britannicum_, he passes his days in the primitive occupation of gardening. Our bookseller is a self-educated man, and in some pamphlets on the charitable institution to which we have alluded, are many of the errors of style peculiar to self-educated writers. Among his acquaintance we remember an attorney who practised in London, but had a small house in the town. He had been editor and proprietor of four or five morning and evening newspapers, and furnished our bookseller with all the news off 'Change and about town. This friend and the journals were his oracles, and their influence he digested in morsels of political economy, so introduced into his pamphlets as not to offend the landed gentry of the neighbourhood. To them, it should be mentioned, he was a most useful personage, and his aid and auspices, were almost necessary to the success of any project for the interest of the town. The trades-people looked up to him; they would agree if Mr. ---- did, or they would wait his opinion.