CHARLES WATERTON 199 



his genial element every inch of him," Waterton in a 

 battered top-hat (like Dr. Hobson's style) would stroll 

 with him (absque sudor e frontis — " without perspiration 

 on the forehead " — ^for, unhke the squire's, all Dr. 

 Hobson's Latin quotations are carefully translated, and 

 we are never in doubt as to what " Tu mihi magnus 

 Apollo " means) and study the ways of his orchestral 

 guests. 



So well were the birds acquainted with their pro- 

 tector that there, at the " apicial extremity " of a bough, 

 is one " constructing a fabrication " (as it were in a 

 verdant House of Commons) of moss and straw before 

 the very eyes of the onlookers. Within the house was 

 a large telescope, from which could be seen, for instance, 

 the " uncertain tenure of equilibrium " of the coot on 

 her nest. The squire himself is not unworthy of study. 

 There was nothing he could think or do but in his own 

 original way, for he was a staunch Roman Catholic (that 

 religion which worships a God who cares nothing for 

 His birds and beasts), and always attributed his great 

 bodily strength to the Jesuit Fathers at Stonyhurst 

 College, where he was educated to abstain from all 

 spirituous liquors. He made up for this abstention 

 by spiritual draughts of unusual potency, for he relates 

 with the most solemn testimony that when he was at 

 Naples he witnessed the miracle of the liquefaction of 

 St. Januarius's solid blood, repeated on January 1st 

 of every year since the lamentable death of that martyr. 

 But I doubt whether temperance had much to do with 

 his massive frame, for the grave Hobson remarks that, 

 while he took no drink, " he was incautious and by no 

 means even ordinarily discreet in the consumption of 

 solids." 



Inside his house, he had playfully fashioned a number 

 of figures in taxidermy representing prominent per- 

 sonages of the Reformation. " He also associated with 

 our most distinguished characters of Church Refor- 

 mation a sprinkling of his fancifully suggested or sup- 

 posed inhabitants of the infernal regions, not, of course, 

 forgetting to introduce, in a moment of vanity, the 

 ' Old Gentleman ' under the cognomen of ' Old Nick '." 



