general habit of boys, or from his being one of those boys to whom such names easily and naturally attach, he was always called Doctor by his school-fellows. When he was very young, he was caught pulling out a little girl's tooth, because he had seen a quack doctor, the celebrated Dr. Katerfelto, amongst some mountebanks in his village, performing the same operation. He was not at all proud of his independence, or bold or forward in personal courage as a boy. He had none of the saucy pertness of a tyrant school-boy, conscious of his own superiority in any thing, but a great share of that amiable sort of prudence and forethought, that marks the cast of mind rather than bodily or mental vigour. On being told of the death of a schoolfellow, he said, he did not much wonder, for he was the only boy in the school he ever did or ever could thrash. Strange as it must have seemed to himself, who, of all men living, was one of the most feeling guardians of the animal creation, (maugre what his biographers Meadley, and with a sympathetic, or perhaps copied humanity, Chalmers, have said of his fishing,) the only pastime he then joined in was cock-fighting; but it is necessary to say, that by a school, or rather school-boy's charter, leave was obtained by the governors or trustees at the annual audit, for not only the boys, but the masters, to attend a cock-fighting, which the whole neighbourhood frequented. Consequently the keeping and feeding and fighting of cocks became a matter of state policy.

The years of childhood are the same in thousands, who are not afterwards to make a figure in the world; but as bespeaking something peculiarly characteristic in after life, it may be well to observe how far this strong disinclination for common sports and taste for original diversions might lead him to pursue with more satisfaction both a line of life and a mode of signalizing himself so different from the pursuits of his companions, or of his neighbourhood, at that time. By his parents, however, he was reckoned a weak and delicate boy, and this might account to them for his aversion to the rough sports of boys, and might lead himself to indulge in a moody sort of animation, which, without being characteristic of finer feeling, or poetical sensibility, led him to droll tricks with his neighbours, and to win by his kindness and attention, and pleasantry, the favour of all the old women in the neighbourhood. To these and to his sisters he showed an evident preference; such company he courted, and at the cottage fire-side he always found a welcome. He was even at that time fond

of fishing, partly perhaps from following the taste of the neighbourhood in one of the finest trout rivers in England, and partly from finding in it a certain quiet whiling away of time, to which he seems at that time to have been partial. He certainly neither professed, nor wished to attain excellence in the art. He was much laughed at by his associates for his clumsy fishing tackle, and want of dexterity; but he continued so remarkably attached to it during the remainder of his life without being signally successful, that his love for it may fairly be imputed rather to his fondness for the quietness and peace, and the workings of the mind that accompany the sport, than any anxiety for the prey. A bite and a nibble were to him a good day's sport at any time of his life, and if by chance he came off with a single rise at his fly, he was fully satisfied. At this age he was remarkable for the keenness and acuteness and shrewdness of his observations. An old woman knitting, or a neighbouring joiner at his work, afforded a rare exercise for his inquisitiveness and originality. These were his usual places of resort when very young, and he used not seldom to sit up all night with one of his neighbours to watch the process of soap-boiling. There is one anecdote given of him in his family, which whether from mere coincidence, or some more worthy prognostication, peculiarly marks that artless disposition which characterized him through the rest of his life. When a mere boy, probably from the same principle which tempts other boys to imitate their fathers, he was found preaching in the market-cross of his village, and bawling out to a circle of old women and boys, "Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile." "Ay, for sure," said an old lady who was passing, "every body knows thou art a guileless lad."

As to his abilities or attainments at school, his father seemed more disposed to rate them by his general character out of the school, than by any strict or brilliant application to his exercises. If any judgement of his performances can be drawn from his own account, it may seem that he was more observant of the regular discipline of the school, and of his father, and less satisfied with himself by reason of his own indolence, than has been represented. He was kept close to his books; he never stood in need of correction, but stood much in awe of his father, if by chance an exercise was unfinished or idly performed. So far was this carried, that he once, in company with his cousins and another boy who lodged in his father's house, not only ran away from home, but persevered in it, till, at night-fall,

finding their beds on a wide and waste moor or peat-moss not so commodious as they had been used to, and not being designed by nature for little heroes, one of them pretended to be a conjuror, and assured them that he had heard something fly past with Whittington's message on a similar occasion, and the next morning found them at their post. It ought to be mentioned, that this little freak was the only indication given during his life of his ever being weary of his work, or of his ever feeling a wish to desert the task of labouring with his mind rather than his body.

For the credit, however, both of the school and schoolmaster, (since that seems rather misrepresented or dubiously spoken of,) it ought to be told that it was then (at the present time peculiarly so) in as high repute as any other of the old grammar schools in the north; that its fame was grounded chiefly on being a classical school; that as to making accomplished classical scholars, it was rather an object with the master to enable them to proceed by grounding them well; and that his son, though by no means brought forward before others, or obtaining any remarkable pre-eminence over any of his competitors, was indebted to him for whatever he obtained of his classical information, and of his classical taste; that he was more particularly indebted to his father for much of that accuracy and exactness in training young minds to the same taste; that his fitness for the office of tutor, in which most of his biographers have made him preeminent, was probably the result of this regular and systematic teaching of his father; and that the system of discipline which made so important a part of both his public and private instruction in his more mature years was but the fruit of the same seed. He appears to have retained much more fondness for his classical than his mathematical acquirements; the very contrary of which is asserted, without any warrant. He was far from ambitious of reputation in either study, and pursued them rather as necessary means to a future profession than fondled them for their own sake.

At the age of fifteen (1758) his father entered him as sizar at his own college (Christ's) at Cambridge; and wishing to visit his friends and his little vicarage, he accompanied his son on horseback, the only mode of travelling then in use in his neighbourhood. Dr. Paley's account of the matter was as follows: "I was sent earlier to college than any young man before or since; and the reason was b Chalmers.

a

See Quarterly Review.-Meadley.- Chalmers.

this-my mother wished to make a baker of me, and my father had made up his mind that I should be a parson. Having just recovered from a fit of illness when I was at the age of fifteen, he took me to college, and had me entered upon the books." On this occasion, it being observed by the Mayor of Lincoln, that it was a fortunate circumstance, as they should not have had the pleasure of having him there; "That does not follow, Mr. Mayor," he replied; "for though not subdean, I might have been Mayor of Lincoln."

It was to be expected that a lad of fifteen, just emerging from his hills on a pony of his own, and with his pockets full of money, should be more struck with the novelty of his situation than with any other event at that time; and so he would, had not his whole mind been engrossed with jockeyship. He used to recollect it with great pleasure; and being constantly disposed to make his wit and ridicule. fall upon himself rather than others, would relate his disastrous journey and his numerous falls, and his father's caution with regard to his money, in the very language and manner already made public. On his return with his father, he was sent, as a preparation for the university, for one year to Dishforth, near Topcliffe, in the North. Riding of Yorkshire, to be under a young man who was just leaving his father's school to take upon him the office of village schoolmaster at that place, and who being a remarkably simple, honest, and worthy character, was much esteemed both by Dr. Paley and his father. Here, when he became subdean of Lincoln, on his annual journey from Bishop Wearmouth to that place, he pointed out to his family, with great seeming satisfaction, the very house he lived in for £8 a year; spoke much of the familiar manner in which he passed his time with the villagers, but never said a word about his acquirements in mathematics, which must have been great, considering that with one year's preparation for the university, and with the assistance of a person but little older than himself, he was able, and conscious enough of his power, notwithstanding his abuse of the intermediate time, to become senior wrangler. This place he seemed anxious to mark in his recollection for two things-for his being attracted by the simplicity of his host's family, and for his now first having an orange of his own; in other words, from first feeling his own master. But if this was all that he thought worthy of notice, others in the village and in the school were ready enough to observe so many peculiarities in him, that he readily gained the reputation of being crazed. From

his habit of constantly pondering, and musing, and employing his thoughts, he was much alone. The place of his most frequent resort was a pump in the middle of the village, which he used to aim at from the side of the road a dozen times before he could hit it. His master observed, that when they walked together to the neighbouring town of Borough-Bridge, what was eight miles to him, his friend Paley, by his strange turnings, and twistings, and stoppings, managed ingeniously to make sixteen. Here too his vicinity to Knaresborough, where his uncle lived, gave him an opportunity of interesting himself much about Eugene Aram, who, he used to say, was hanged, if ever man was, by his own ingenuity. To this event, and to his associations with it, he used to think was owing his great fondness for matters of judicature, and particularly for criminal courts. It might probably have been the first application of a mind already prepared for close observation; at any rate it seems to have been the first exercise of a faculty in which he afterwards so much excelled.

When he was sixteen years old, he went to reside in college, probably not only from the fashion of sending young men so much earlier, but in order that he might be sooner able to stickle for himself, as his phrase was; but whether he was partly led away by the charm of dissipation, and by the novelty of a college life, or felt some dissatisfaction at the manner in which he spent the early part of his time there, cannot now be ascertained. It is stated as a probability in the work alluded to, without any mark of his dissent. He certainly disapproved much of the plan of sending mere boys to college, and practised nearly the opposite extreme in his own family. It is not to be understood that he was inattentive to the general pursuits of a university education; but perhaps not in a way to satisfy a prediction which his father had made to one of his boarders,

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Public Characters for 1802. This work, desultory as it is in most of its articles, and much as he used to smile at the article belonging to his name, was presented to him in his lifetime, and corrected by him in many of the facts by marginal notes, very much in his manner. No, no, unjust, forgery, foolish paragraph, questionable." And this, to which I have alluded already, is the only piece of information which can be considered authentic from his own hand. I have availed myself of it wherever I can. I have reason to think that the "character of Archdeacon Paley" was inserted by one whose information on the subject need not have been scanty, and whose general character for eminent abilities was very high. I believe this to have been made known to, or at least strongly suspected by Dr. Paley himself.-ED.