given him an opportunity of speaking of its antiquity at least, without having recourse to the Herald's office, but he was better satisfied to take it as he found it. These recollections, however, afforded amusement for many an hour with his family. With a district so singular in the romantic wildness of its scenery, compared with much of the surrounding country, but more singular, at least in his early days, for the almost characteristic independence and simplicity of its inhabitants, his associations seemed entirely pleasurable; but it might be because he had often afterwards an opportunity of renewing his early impressions at a time when other scenes and objects had drawn his attention, and when he might be forcibly struck with the difference, rather than, as has been represented, "from his feeling himself most at home, because the unworn asperities of his nature, as they excited the least surprise, so gave the least offence*." The esteem with which he was always received, and the cordiality of his welcome, made him sensible that the worth and integrity of his friends in Craven were far too valuable to make him attend at all to any reciprocal accommodations of mere manner, or any comfortable feeling of being set loose from the restrictions of polished society. He was little inclined either there or any where else to lay much stress on those little particularities of private life, which serve to annoy or to please inferior * Quarterly Review. minds, but few were more attentive to time, place, and situation. Inferences drawn from any recollections of early days are not much to be relied on, as indicating any thing of character; except it be some prevailing tendency which unconsciously arises from early habits; and it is not inaptly observed that the cast of his character might be derived from his connexion with the place almost of his nativity. As far as it was "locus Græcâ comitate et provinciali parsimoniâ mixtus, et bene compositus," he certainly was much indebted to it. The originality also of his character, as well as his bold independence in thinking and acting, might be partly owing to the manners of the place. But for the line of life marked out for him, for much of his force and aptness of expression, for many of his private habits, which materially influenced his public character, for his dislike of any sacrifice of his time and occupations to the mere etiquette of life, for his economy on a plan, for his clever and often ridiculous calculation upon the wants and necessities of a family, for his observation upon the minutiæ of life, for his almost parsimonious habits in what regarded himself, and for his liberal, and even profuse, way of dealing with the wants of others, we may find some account in what he used often to relate of his father and mother; though as few families are without their peculiar secrets, any approach to * Meadley, Appendix A, 2d edition. wards meddling with what may be called the individuality of a family must be rather fearful. On the death of his mother he says, among other things, "she was the most careful and affectionate of parents," and he who never said a word too much in his letters, though it cannot be expected that he should give this as the whole of her character, marked her leading traits as decidedly as it is held out by her acquaintance. She was a little, shrewd-looking, keen-eyed woman, of remarkable strength of mind and spirits; one of those positive characters that decide promptly, and execute at once; of a sanguine and irritable temper, which led her to be constantly on the alert in thinking and acting. Her characteristic excellence was in the conduct of her family concerns. It was very much the fashion of her day and of her neighbourhood to have, or aim at having, the reputation of good management. She was so thrifty in her housewifery, that it not only formed the chief object of her attention, but gave rise to the only characteristic trait recorded of her in her family, viz. her turn for practical drollery. If she could surprise her servants in bed at four o'clock in the morning, she seized the opportunity of sparing herself the trouble of a scold, and yet gaining the advantages of it, by carrying up their breakfast, and with a curtsy, presenting it to the ladies. She was certainly a clever managing woman. She had for her fortune £400, which in those days, and in that neighbourhood, was almost sufficient to confer the title of an heiress; at least it was a fair sum for one of good family. At the time of her marriage, which was much disapproved of as beneath what she ought to have expected, she rode on horseback behind her husband from Stackhouse, near Settle, in Craven, to Peterborough: she undertook the charge of the limited income which a vicarage of £35 a year, a minor canonry of Peterborough cathedral, and a few pupils afforded. She afterwards, on her husband's being elected master of the grammar school at Giggleswick, travelled back to her native country in the same plight, with her son on her lap, and all their worldly goods in a tea-chest. She kept her family, which increased to four children, reputably and respectably, on a very limited income: she gave £100 to her husband towards building a house, and another hundred towards an outfit for her son at College, and upon her death left £2,200 to her family, the accumulation of her small portion in the hands of a brother as managing as herself. Her husband was of a different cast of character; Hiberal to profusion for his income, yet not only economical on a plan, but even scanty in his allowances to his family. It is not very important to know that shillings will become pounds, and hundreds, thousands; but it may be worth notice, as showing what a short distance there is between a low estate and comparative opulence, and how soon a different rank and estimation in society may be gained, that this plan of economy and almost hereditary carefulness raised this younger son of a yeoman of no very opu lent family to comparative wealth and consideration. He was educated at the school of his native place, and after receiving the portion of a younger son, a good education, was entered at Christ's College, Cambridge, as a sizar, was presented to the small vicarage of Helpstone by his college (as a compensation for some disappointment in a fellowship), from which he seldom got more than £30 a year, and when he left that neighbourhood was obliged to be satisfied with a few flower seeds for his daughters, transmitted annually by his curate as a balance to the produce of his living. It would not at last maintain a curate. He removed to Peterborough, where he obtained a minor canonry; was afterwards gratified by being elected schoolmaster of his native place on £80 a year, which afterwards became £200, and by the assistance as well as example of his managing wife, added to a legacy of £1,500, which laid the foundation perhaps of his family and fortune, contrived to scrape together £7,000. This same plan of putting forward both exertion and carefulness procured to his son William, the subject of these Memoirs, as far as was independent of the changes and chances of every man's lot, threefold both of fame and fortune from a very small beginning. And now we have done with worldly matters. The father of Dr. Paley was a cheerful, jocose man, a great wit, and an enlivening companion; in his days of activity, fond of field sports, and more fond of company than was relished at home. In his neigh |