It was always said by those who knew the family that my father was the cleverest member of it, but his ability must have expended itself in witty conversation and in his professional work, as I do not remember the smallest evidence of what are called intellectual tastes. My mother had a few books that had belonged to her family, and to these my father added scarcely anything. I can remember his books quite clearly, even at this distance of time. One was a biography of William IV., another a set of sketches of Reform Ministers, a third was Baines's "History of Lancashire," a fourth a Geographical Dictionary. These were, I believe, almost all the books (not concerned with the legal profession) that my father ever purchased. His bookcase did not contain a single volume by the most popular English poets of his own time, nor even so much as a novel by Sir Walter Scott. I have no recollection of ever having seen him read a book, but he took in the "Times" newspaper, and I clearly remember that he read the leading articles, which it was the fashion at that time to look upon as models of style. This absence of interest in literature was accompanied by that complete and absolute indifference to the fine arts which was so common in the middle classes and the country aristocracy of those days. I mention these deficiencies to explain the extreme dulness of my poor father's existence during his widowhood, a dulness that a lover of books must have a difficulty in imagining. A man living alone with servants (for his son's childhood was spent elsewhere), who took hardly any interest in a profession that had become little more than nominal for him, who had not even the stimulus of a desire to accumulate wealth (almost the only recognized object in the place where he lived), a man who had no intellectual pursuits whatever, and whose youth was too far behind him for any joyous physical activity, was condemned to seek such amusements as the customs of the place afforded, and these all led to drinking. He and his friends drank when they were together to make society merrier, and when they happened to be alone they drank to make solitude endurable. Had they drunk light wines like French peasants, or beer like Germans, they might have lasted longer, but their favorite drink was brandy in hot strong grogs, accompanied by unlimited tobacco. They dined in the middle of the day, and had the spirit decanters and the tobacco-box on the table instead of dessert, frequently drinking through the whole afternoon and a long evening afterwards. In the morning they slaked alcoholic thirst with copious draughts of ale. My father went on steadily with this kind of existence without anything whatever to rescue him from its gradual and fatal degradation. He separated himself entirely from the class he belonged to by birth, lived with men of little culture, though they may have had natural wit, and sacrificed his whole future to mere village conviviality. Thousands of others have followed the same road, but few have sacrificed so much. My father had a constitution such as is not given to one man in ten thousand, and his mind was strong and clear, though he had not literary tastes. He was completely independent, free to travel or to make a fortune in his profession if he preferred a sedentary existence, but the binding force of habit overcame his weakened will, and he fell into a kind of life that placed intellectual and moral recovery alike beyond his reach.