“To her mighty bone she hath a pinguitude withal which makes the depth of winter to her the most desirable season.  Her distress in the warmer solstice is pitiable.  During the months of July and August she usually renteth a cool cellar, where ices are kept, whereinto she descendeth when Sirius rageth.  She dates from a hot Thursday, some twenty-five years ago.  Her apartment in summer is pervious to the four winds.  Two doors in north and south direction, and two windows fronting the rising and the setting sun, never closed, from every cardinal point catch the contributory breezes.  She loves to enjoy what she calls a quadruple draught.  That must be a shrewd zephyr that can escape her.  I owe a painful face-ache, which oppresses me at this moment, to a cold caught, sitting by her, one day in last July, at this receipt of coolness.  Her fan in ordinary resembleth a banner spread, which she keepeth continually on the alert to detect the least breeze.

“She possesseth an active and gadding mind, totally incommensurate with her person.  No one delighteth more than herself in country exercises and pastimes.  I have passed many an agreeable holiday with her in her favorite park at Woodstock.  She performs her part in these delightful ambulatory excursions by the aid of a portable garden-chair.  She setteth out with you at a fair foot-gallop, which she keepeth up till you are both well breathed, and then she reposeth for a few seconds.  Then she is up again for a hundred paces or so, and again resteth,—­her movement, on these sprightly occasions, being something between walking and flying.  Her great weight seemeth to propel her forward, ostrich-fashion.  In this kind of relieved marching I have traversed with her many scores of acres on those well-wooded and well-watered domains.

“Her delight at Oxford is in the public walks and gardens, where, when the weather is not too oppressive, she passeth much of her valuable time.  There is a bench at Maudlin, or rather, situated between the frontiers of that and ——­’s College,—­some litigation, latterly, about repairs, has vested the property of it finally in ——­’s,—­where at the hour of noon she is ordinarily to be found sitting,—­so she calls it by courtesy,—­but, in fact, pressing and breaking of it down with her enormous settlement; as both those Foundations, who, however, are good-natured enough to wink at it, have found, I believe, to their cost.  Here she taketh the fresh air, principally at vacation times, when the walks are freest from interruption of the younger fry of students.  Here she passeth her idle hours, not idly, but generally accompanied with a book,—­blest, if she can but intercept some resident Fellow, (as usually there are some of that brood left behind at these periods,) or stray Master of Arts, (to most of whom she is better known than their dinner-bell,) with whom she may confer upon any curious topic of literature.  I have seen these shy gownsmen, who truly set but a very slight value upon female conversation, cast a hawk’s eye upon her from the length of Maudlin Grove, and warily glide off into another walk,—­true monks as they are, and ungently neglecting the delicacies of her polished converse, for their own perverse and uncommunicating solitariness!