Self-complacence Hubby Dickinson had felt, in his day,—and he must have been a philosopher, indeed, could he have utterly subdued such a feeling,—seeing that his learning was esteemed, by gentle and simple, a thing so ponderous and vast, that every body wondered how Master Zerubbabel's brain could hold it, or his shoulders bear the burthen of it. Certes, there was not even a clergyman in the neighbourhood, despite his Oxford or Cambridge matriculation, but what resorted to the humble abode of the great antiquarian schoolmaster for the interpretation of difficult Greek or Hebrew texts; not an ancient will or parchment ever puzzled a Rutland lawyer, but it was brought to Master Zerubbabel Dickinson to decipher it; and not a ploughboy or a hedger or ditcher found a rust-eaten coin, or an ancient key, or a mysterious-looking fragment of pottery beneath the earth's surface, but they would forthwith journey to the dwelling of the "high-larnt" Oakham schoolmaster to learn the meaning, or the use, or the value of their discovery. Coins the illustrious Zerubbabel possessed of all ages, and almost all countries—at least, so he believed,—and keys of the most ornate Saxon fashion; and spear-heads and arrow-heads of the most primitive Keltic rudeness; beaking-bills of the age of Alfred, and daggers of the reign of Canute; fragments of steel-shirts that had been worn in the Crusades; and hilts and crosses of swords which had done service in Cressy or Agincourt: and all these were so learnedly arranged, that their order, itself, proclaimed the antiquary's incomparable erudition; while the syllables he would utter in illustration of their uses, and ages, and owners, and concomitants innumerable, left you in a perfect whirl of wonder! Now, of all these, the priceless contents of his precious museum, Zerubbabel had written folio upon folio; and still continued to write thereon, feeling that it behoved him to say all that possibly could be said, on topics of such surpassing magnitude and importance, ere he ventured to give his lucubrations to the world. Nevertheless, these were minor labours, which, compared with one great and grand undertaking that occupied nine-tenths of every leisure hour of his more advanced life, were but as so many ant-hills to a pyramid.