after chest found their way into Staffordshire, but time was often wanted to unpack and arrange them, much less to read them. On one occasion he writes to his friend Bentley :-"I thank you for the catalogues, but have not had time to read a page. My wife says I must buy no more books till I build another house, and advises me first to read some of those I have already. What nonsense she sometimes talks!" Yet in spite of this remonstrance the old taste still prevailed.

Charles Jenkinson, Earl of Liverpool, studied coins in his leisure hours; and, on his "Treatise on the Coins of the Realm," the Edinburgh Reviewer thus wrote:-"It is pleasing to find one who must necessarily have been bred among the exploded doctrines of the elder economists shaking himself almost quite loose from their influence, at an advanced period of life, and betraying, whilst he resumes the favourite speculations of his early life, so little bias towards errors which he must once have imbibed. It is no less gratifying to observe one who has been educated in the walks of practical policy, and grown old amidst the bustle of public employments, embellishing the decline of life by pursuits which unite the dignity of science with the usefulness of active exertion."

In sketching, Sir Charles Bell found a congenial

recreation, and it may be remembered that Mr. Haden, the surgeon, while carrying on a large London practice, pursued his favourite hobby of etching. In course of time he proved himself possessed of considerable talent in this his usual pastime, and what had simply been a means of recreation now became to him a considerable source of profit.

Then there was David Allan, popularly known as the "Scottish Hogarth." His hobby of drawing originated in an accident. Having burnt his foot, he amused himself with drawing on the floor with a piece of chalk, a mode of passing his time which soon obtained a fascination for him. On his return to school he drew a caricature of his schoolmaster punishing a pupil, which caused him to be summarily expelled. But his success as an artist was decided, for the caricature was considered so clever that he was sent to Glasgow to study Art.

His love of science influenced even the arrangements of Assheton Smith's household. At Tedworth, at Vonol, and at his London house, he devised a railroad from the kitchen to his diningroom, along which the dishes passed and repassed, and by this means he obviated the necessity of the servants quitting the room and the consequent delay. At Voenol, writes Sir J.

Eardley Wilmot, "the train arriving with its savoury load opened a trap-door at the end of the dining-room. This closed of itself immediately after the admission of the course, and thus no inconvenience arose from the smell of cooking, which frequently penetrates open doors and passages in the largest houses. The weight of the empty dishes going down, as in the case of the slate waggons at Llanberris, brought upon the platform within the dining-room, by means of diminutive connecting ropes, the hot and smoking trucks coming up."

Latterly, too, we are further told, when suffering from asthma, he had an ingenious mechanical contrivance, by which he was raised to his bedroom, on one of the upper floors, as he always entertained a great objection to sleeping on the ground floor. He was also fond of weighing himself, and had scales both at Tedworth and at his seat in Wales.

"Reminiscences of T. Assheton Smith," 168.

END OF VOL. I.

INDEX TO VOL. I.