any occasion betrayed into intemperance in maintaining it. So far from
this, if he found any unfortunate opinion in a hopeless minority of the
company he happened to be in, he was often chivalrous enough to come
to its aid, and see what could be said for it. When lecturing became a
mania, he had taken to lecturing; and looking about for an unoccupied
subject, he had lighted on the natural history of fish, in which he soon
became sufficiently proficient to amuse the ladies, and astonish the
fishermen in any seaside place of fashionable resort. Here he always
arranged his lecture-room, so that the gentility of his audience could
sit on a platform, and the natives in a gallery above, and that thus the
fishy and tarry odours which the latter were most likely to bring with
them might ascend into the upper air, and not mingle with the more
delicate fragrances that surrounded the select company below. He took
a summer tour to several watering-places, and was thoroughly satisfied
with his success. The fishermen at first did not take cordially to him;
but their wives attended from curiosity, and brought their husbands with
them on nights not favourable to fishing; and by degrees he won on their
attention, and they took pleasure in hearing him, though they learned
nothing from him that was of any use in their trade. But he seemed to
exalt their art in the eyes of themselves and others, and he told them
some pleasant anecdotes of strange fish, and of perilous adventures of
some of their own craft, which led in due time to the crowding of his
gallery. The ladies went, as they always will go, to lectures, where
they fancy they learn something, whether they learn anything or not; and
on these occasions, not merely to hear the lecturer, but to be seen
by him. To them, however attractive the lecture might have been, the
lecturer was more so. He was an irresistible temptation to matrons with
marriageable daughters, and wherever he sojourned he was overwhelmed
with invitations. It was a contest who should have him to dinner, and
in the simplicity of his heart, he ascribed to admiration of his science
and eloquence all the courtesies and compliments with which he was
everywhere received. He did not like to receive unreturned favours, and
never left a place in which he had accepted many invitations, without
giving in return a ball and supper on a scale of great munificence;
which filled up the measure of his popularity, and left on all his