68 LIFE OF MYTTON. 



" Noi nobis, doviine" having an hour or two before 

 been eating fat bacon and drinking strong ale at some 

 tenant's or other farm-house on his road home from 

 his field pursuits. Again : if he had a good race- 

 horse in his stables, he would run him off his legs, 

 nearly to his destruction ; and he served his favourite 

 hunters in the same manner. All this could have 

 been reconciled with youthful enthusiasm and Welsh 

 blood ; but with Mytton it could be only traced to 

 one cause, which grew with his growth, but did not 

 quit him in his manhood, and finally plunged him 

 into the abyss of misery ! 



But if the proprietor of it himself was not satisfied 

 with the resources which Halston afforded, few of his 

 friends were so unreasonable as to have looked for 

 amusement and not found it ; for, indeed, the very 

 proprietor of it alone, with his various appendants 

 and his frolics, was a constant source of mirth. A 

 celebrated historian of the Augustan age, however, 

 now presents himself to my view, and wisely reminds 

 me, that decency is a principal virtue in an historian, 

 and that he should preserve the characters of the 

 persons, as well as the dignity of the actions of those 

 of whom he treats. Heretofore I trust I have written 

 nothinrr that can be construed into more than an 



