546 MEMOIR OF 
elegance. It was here, from this period, that all his hours of 
enjoyment were passed,—that all his works were composed,— 
and that, in the bosom of his family, and amid the scenery and 
amusements of the country, he found the happiness that was 
most congenial to his character and disposition. 
His morning hours were uniformly given to study; but his 
studies were of a nature that tended rather to animate than to 
fatigue his mind. It was not in abstract or metaphysical spe- 
culations he was engaged, where the understanding only is ex- 
vercised, and where the progress of discovery is so little propor- 
tioned to the time or labour that is employed ; nor in works 
.of imagination, where the mind is ever in pursuit of that ideal 
‘excellence which it is never destined to attain. The historical, 
the antiquarian, or the critical studies in which he was engaged, 
required no painful concentration of thought, and no laborious 
processes of reasoning. They related to the deeds and lan- 
guage of men, where it was not the understanding alone that was 
employed, but where the imagination and the heart were per- 
petually exercised ; and he could rise from them to the com- 
mon business or offices of life, with a mind undistracted by 
doubt, and unfatigued by abstraction. The employments to 
which he gave his hours of exercise, were of the same gentle 
and cheerful kind. He had little relish for the sports of the 
field, unless angling, in which, like the amiable and contem- 
plative Watton, he had from his early days delighted; but 
he took great delight in gardening, in the embellishment of 
his pleasure-grounds, and, more than all, in improving the 
dwellings, and extending the comforts of his cottagers,—an 
occupation, in which taste so fortunately combines with bene- 
ficence, and in which, fer all the labour or expence he bestow- 
ed, Mr Tyrer found himself every day rewarded, by seeing 
the face of nature and of man brightening around him. 
' The 
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