388 KOCKING-HORSE HOBBIES. 



ings of a colony of ants, anointing, perhaps, the trunks of 

 his trees with insect bird-lime sweet syrup to attract and 

 entrap unwary moths, or in the warm twilights, sitting, net 

 in hand, to arrest them on the wing. Or perhaps he was as 

 busy in the library, now giving us a lesson, Lucy in reading, 

 myself in Greek or Latin, by way of preparing us, the one for 

 a boarding-school, the other for college ; now skimming the 

 surface of a classic tome, now gliding over the depths of a 

 father of the church, now turning over with fondness, 

 half of the naturalist, half of the bibliomanist, the finely- 

 illustrated pages of Merian or of Stoll, those of ' Curtis's 

 Entomology' or the 'Flora Londinensis,' now writing (per- 

 haps by the hand of Mr. Caligraph) sometimes a sermon, 

 sometimes a few desultory observations on a plant or insect, 

 intended for the Linnaean Transactions, wherein, however 

 (for want of completion), they rarely enough obtained a 

 place. 



A man thus occupied could hardly be said to have had a 

 hobby, or, if any or many my* uncle had, they were all like 

 rocking-horses, just serving to amuse and keep him in motion, 

 not to carry him to any end ; but if the pursuit which had 

 most diverted him was entomology, the object in which he had 

 always taken most pride was his library, on the furnishing of 

 which he had expended, as we have noticed, large sums. The 

 library itself was something of a classic place. Like the rest 

 of the parsonage, it was of ancient build, heavy beamed, low, 



