gh
was equine, and showed his teeth upward at the sides. Wordsworth, who
notices similar mysterious manifestations on the part of donkeys, would
have thought it ominous. Bonnycastle was passionately fond of quoting
Shakspeare, and telling stories; and if the _Edinburgh Review_ had just
come out, would give us all the jokes in it. He had once an
hypochondriacal disorder of long duration; and he told us, that he
should never forget the comfortable sensation given him one night during
this disorder, by his knocking a landlord, that was insolent to him,
down the man's staircase. On the strength of this piece of energy
(having first ascertained that the offender was not killed) he went to
bed, and had a sleep of unusual soundness. Perhaps Bonnycastle thought
more highly of his talents than the amount of them strictly warranted; a
mistake to which scientific men appear to be more liable than others,
the universe they work in being so large, and their universality (in
Bacon's sense of the word) being often so small. But the delusion was
not only pardonable, but desirable, in a man so zealous in the
performance of his duties, and so much of a human being to all about
him, as Bonnycastle was. It was delightful one day to hear him speak
with complacency of a translation which had appeared of one of his books
in Arabic, and which began by saying, on the part of the translator,
that "it had pleased God, for the advancement of human knowledge, to
raise us up a Bonnycastle." Some of his stories were a little romantic,
and no less authentic. He had an anecdote of a Scotchman, who boasted of
being descended from the Admirable Crichton; in proof of which, the
Scotchman said he had "a grit quantity of table-leenen in his
possassion, marked A. C., Admirable Creechton."

Kinnaird, the magistrate, was a stout, sanguine man, under the middle
height, with a fine, lamping black eye, lively to the last, and a person
that "had increased, was increasing, and ought to have been diminished;"
which is by no means what he thought of the prerogative. Next to his
bottle he was fond of his Horace; and, in the intervals of business at
the police-office, would enjoy both in his arm-chair. Between the vulgar
calls of this kind of magistracy, and the perusal of the urbane Horace,
there must have been a gusto of contradiction, which the bottle,
perhaps, was required to render quite palatable. Fielding did not love
his bottle the less for being obliged to lec