and to general acceptance, in lieu of a heart.  He had been the husband of three wives, all long since dead; the father of twenty children, most of whom, at every age of childhood or maturity, had likewise returned to dust.  Here, one would suppose, might have been sorrow enough to imbue the sunniest disposition through and through with a sable tinge.  Not so with our old Inspector.  One brief sigh sufficed to carry off the entire burden of these dismal reminiscences.  The next moment he was as ready for sport as any unbreeched infant:  far readier than the Collector’s junior clerk, who at nineteen years was much the elder and graver man of the two.

I used to watch and study this patriarchal personage with, I think, livelier curiosity than any other form of humanity there presented to my notice.  He was, in truth, a rare phenomenon; so perfect, in one point of view; so shallow, so delusive, so impalpable such an absolute nonentity, in every other.  My conclusion was that he had no soul, no heart, no mind; nothing, as I have already said, but instincts; and yet, withal, so cunningly had the few materials of his character been put together that there was no painful perception of deficiency, but, on my part, an entire contentment with what I found in him.  It might be difficult—­and it was so—­to conceive how he should exist hereafter, so earthly and sensuous did he seem; but surely his existence here, admitting that it was to terminate with his last breath, had been not unkindly given; with no higher moral responsibilities than the beasts of the field, but with a larger scope of enjoyment than theirs, and with all their blessed immunity from the dreariness and duskiness of age.

One point in which he had vastly the advantage over his four-footed brethren was his ability to recollect the good dinners which it had made no small portion of the happiness of his life to eat.  His gourmandism was a highly agreeable trait; and to hear him talk of roast meat was as appetizing as a pickle or an oyster.  As he possessed no higher attribute, and neither sacrificed nor vitiated any spiritual endowment by devoting all his energies and ingenuities to subserve the delight and profit of his maw, it always pleased and satisfied me to hear him expatiate on fish, poultry, and butcher’s meat, and the most eligible methods of preparing them for the table.  His reminiscences of good cheer, however ancient the date of the actual banquet, seemed to bring the savour of pig or turkey under one’s very nostrils.  There were flavours on his palate that had lingered there not less than sixty or seventy years, and were still apparently as fresh as that of the mutton chop which he had just devoured for his breakfast.  I have heard him smack his lips over dinners, every guest at which, except himself, had long been food for worms.  It was marvellous to observe how the ghosts of bygone meals were continually rising up before him—­not in anger or retribution,