e, at
which there was dancing and occasionally good singing, between which
and a neighbouring coffee-house he sometimes divided his evenings.
Singing, it seems, he could hear in spite of his deafness. In this
street I took my final leave of him; it turned out such; and,
anticipating at the time that it would be so, I looked after his white
hat at the moment it was disappearing, and exclaimed--"Farewell, thou
half-crazy and most eloquent man! I shall never see thy face again." I
did not intend, at that moment, to visit London again for some years;
as it happened, I was there for a short time in 1814; and then I
heard, to my great satisfaction that Walking Stewart had recovered a
considerable sum (about L14,000 I believe) from the East India
Company; and from the abstract given in the London Magazine of the
Memoir by his relation I have since learned that he applied this money
most wisely to the purchase of an annuity, and that he "persisted in
living" too long for the peace of an annuity office. So fare all
companies East and West, and all annuity offices, that stand opposed
in interest to philosophers! In 1814, however, to my great regret, I
did not see him; for I was then taking a great deal of opium, and
never could contrive to issue to the light of day soon enough for a
morning call upon a philosopher of such early hours; and in the
evening I concluded he would be generally abroad, from what he had
formerly communicated to me of his own habits. It seems, however, that
he afterwards held _converzations_ at his own rooms; and did not stir
out to theatres quite so much. From a brother of mine, who at one time
occupied rooms in the same house with him, I learned that in other
respects he did not deviate in his prosperity from the philosophic
tenor of his former life. He abated nothing of his peripatetic
exercises; and repaired duly in the morning, as he had done in former
years, to St. James's Park,--where he sate in contemplative ease
amongst the cows, inhaling their balmy breath and pursuing his
philosophic reveries. He had also purchased an organ, or more than
one, with which he solaced his solitude and beguiled himself of uneasy
thoughts, if he ever had any.

The works of Walking Stewart must be read with some indulgence; the
titles are generally too lofty and pretending and somewhat
extravagant; the composition is lax and unprecise, as I have before
said; and the doctrines are occasionally very bold, incautiously