cape them. Promise me that, from this day
forward, you will never put your lips to wine, or to spirituous liquors.'
'The sacrifice is nothing,' added he; 'but, in the end, it will prove of
incalculable advantage to you.' I agreed to his enlightened proposal;
and from that hour to this, which is now about nine-and-thirty years, I
have never swallowed one glass of any kind of wine or of ardent spirits."

After leaving college Waterton stayed at home with his father, and
enjoyed fox-hunting for a while. To the end of his days he liked to hear
of a good run, and he would now and then look with pleasure on an
engraving which hung in the usual dining-room at Walton Hall,
representing Lord Darlington, the first master of hounds he had known,
well seated on a powerful horse and surrounded by very muscular hounds.
In 1802 he went to visit two uncles in Spain, and stayed for more than a
year, and there had a terrible experience of pestilence and of
earthquake:--

"There began to be reports spread up and down the city that the black
vomit had made its appearance; and every succeeding day brought testimony
that things were not as they ought to be. I myself, in an alley near my
uncles' house, saw a mattress of most suspicious appearance hung out to
dry. A Maltese captain, who had dined with us in good health at one
o'clock, lay dead in his cabin before sunrise the next morning. A few
days after this I was seized with vomiting and fever during the night. I
had the most dreadful spasms, and it was supposed that I could not last
out till noon the next day. However, strength of constitution got me
through it. In three weeks more, multitudes were seen to leave the city,
which shortly after was declared to be in a state of pestilence. Some
affirmed that the disorder had come from the Levant; others said that it
had been imported from the Havanna; but I think it probable that nobody
could tell in what quarter it had originated.

"We had now all retired to the country-house--my eldest uncle returning
to Malaga from time to time, according as the pressure of business
demanded his presence in the city. He left us one Sunday evening, and
said he would be back again some time on Monday; but that was my poor
uncle's last day's ride. On arriving at his house in Malaga, there was a
messenger waiting to inform him that Father Bustamante had fallen sick,
and wished to see him. Father Bustamante was an aged priest, who had
been particu