Washington sentinel. [volume] (City of Washington [D.C.]) 1853-1856, 1855-08-18

fond of such saltatory interludes TO his hours o.
meditation, and has been discovered leaping oyel
chairs and tables. Once observing the approach
OF pedant, he said 'Now we must leave off
for fool is coming in ~ The learned Petavius
used TO twirl his chair round and round for five
minutes, at the end Of every two hours. Tycho
Brahe diverted himself with polishing glasses for
spectacles. Paley the author of Natural The
oiogy, was SO much given to angling, that he had
his portrait painted with rod and line in his
hand. Louis XVI, of sad memory, amused him
self with lock-making. Salvador Rosa used 10
perform in extempore comedies, and take the
character of a montebank in the streets of Rome.
Anthony Magliabecchi, the famous librarian to the
Duke of Tuscany, took great interest in the
spiders that thronged his apartments and while
sitting amongst his mountains of books, would
caution his visitors not to hurt the spiders !!
Moses Mendelssohn, surnamed the Jewish Soc
rates, would sometimes seek relief from too much
thought in standing ut his window and counting
the tiles on his neghbors roof Thomas Warton,
the poetica antiquary, used to associate with the
schoolboys, while visiting his brother, DR.. j.
Warton. Campbell says when engaged
with them in some culinary occupation, and
when alarmed by the sudden approach of the
master, he has been known to hide himself in the
dark corner of kitchen, and has been dragged
from thence by the doctor, who had taken him
for some great boy. Cowper kept hares and
made bird-cages.
DR.. Johnson was SO fond of his cat, that he
would go out himsef to buy oysters for Puss, be-
cause his servant was Too proud to do So Goethe
kept tame snake, but hated dogs. Ariosto de-
lighted in gardening; but he destroyed all he
planted by turning up the mould to see if the
seeds were terminating. Thomson had his gar
den at Richmond, respecting which the old story
of how he ate peaches off the trees with his
hands in his pockets is related Gibbon
lazy man. Coleridge was content to sit from
morning till night threading the dreamy mazes
of his own mind. Gray said that he wished to
be always lying on sofas, reading eternal new
novels Of Crebillon and Marivaux. Fenton, the
eminent scholar, died from sheer inactivity; he
rose late, and when he had risen, sat down to his
books and papers. woman who waited upon
him in his lodgings, said that he would lie a-bed
and be fed with spoon. Contrary examples to
that Of Sir Walter Scott who wrote all his finest
works before breakfast
To return to the recreations of celebrated per-
sons Oliver Cromwell is said to have sometimes
cast aside his puritan gravity, and played at
blind 's-buff with his daughters and atten-
dants. Henry Quaitre delighted to 60 about in
disguise among the peasantry. Charles IFS
most innocent amusement consisted in feeding
the ducks in St. James Park, and in rearing
numbers of those beautiful spanies that still bear
his name. Beethoven would splash in cold water
at all times in the day. till his chamber was
swamped, and the water oozed through the floor
ing to the rooms beneath. He would also walk out
in the dewy fields at night morning without
shoes or stockings. Shelly took an unaccounta-
BILE delight in floating little paper boats on any
piece of water he CHANGED to be near. There is
a pond Hampstead heath which has often
borne his tiny fleets; and there is anecdote
lated of him-rather too good, fear, to be
true-which says, that being one day beside the
Serpentine, and having other paper in his
pocket wherewith to indulge his passion for ship
building, he actually folded bank bill for fifty
pounds into the desired shape, launched the little
gress with paternal anxiety, and finally went
over and received it in safety at the opposite
side