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 

 tfatigue his mind. It was not in abstract or metaphysical spe- 

 culations he was engaged, where the understanding only is ex- 

 tercised, 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 Walton, he had from his early days delighted ; but 

 lie 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, for all the labour or expence he bestow- 

 ed, Mr Tytler found himself every day rewarded, by seeing 

 the face of nature and of man brightening around him. 



The 



