 anxiously after the change, makes his sixpence go
farther than another lad's half-crown, and will ponder over an old black-letter
copy of the acts of parliament for days, rather than go to the golf or the
change-house; and yet he will not bestow one of these days on a little business
of routine, that would put twenty-shillings in his pocket - a strange mixture of
frugality and industry, and negligent indolence - I don't know what to make of
him.«
    But in process of time his pupil gained the means of making what he pleased
of himself; for his father having died, was not long survived by his eldest son,
an arrant fisher and fowler, who departed this life, in consequence of a cold
caught in his vocation, while shooting ducks in the swamp called
Kittlefittingmoss, notwithstanding his having drunk a bottle of brandy that very
night to keep the cold out of his stomach. Jonathan, therefore, succeeded to the
estate, and with it to the means of subsisting without the hated drudgery of the
law. His wishes were very moderate; and as the rent of his small property rose
with the improvement of the country, it soon greatly exceeded his wants and
expenditure; and though too indolent to make money, he was by no means
insensible to the pleasure of beholding it accumulate. The burghers of the town
near which he lived regarded him with a sort of envy, as one who affected to
divide himself from their rank in society, and whose studies and pleasures
seemed to them alike incomprehensible. Still, however, a sort of hereditary
respect for the Laird of Monkbarns, augmented by the knowledge of his being a
ready-money man, kept up his consequence with this class of his neighbours. The
country gentlemen were generally above him in fortune, and beneath him in
intellect, and, excepting one with whom he lived in habits of intimacy, had
little intercourse with Mr. Oldbuck of Monkbarns. He had, however, the usual
resources, the company of the clergyman, and of the doctor, when he chose to
request it, and also his own pursuits and pleasures, being in correspondence
with most of the virtuosi of his time, who, like himself, measured decayed
entrenchments, made plans of ruined castles, read illegible inscriptions, and
wrote essays on medals in the proportion of twelve pages to each letter of the
legend. Some habits of hasty irritation he had contracted, partly, it was said
in the borough of Fairport, from an early disappointment in love, in virtue of
which he had commenced misogynist,
