His restless eyes were in incessant motion behind his full-sized spectacles.

His long, thin nose was like a knife blade.

Boys have been heard to remark that that organ was magnetised and attracted iron filings.

But this was merely a mischievous report; it had no attraction except for snuff, which it seemed to draw to itself in great quantities.
When I have added, to complete my portrait, that my uncle walked by mathematical strides of a yard and a half, and that in walking he kept his fists firmly closed, a sure sign of an irritable temperament, I think I shall have said enough to disenchant any one who should by mistake have coveted much of his company.
He lived in his own little house in Koenigstrasse, a structure half brick and half wood, with a gable cut into steps; it looked upon one of those winding canals which intersect each other in the middle of the ancient quarter of Hamburg, and which the great fire of 1842 had fortunately spared.
[1] Sixty-three.

(Tr.) [2] As Sir Humphry Davy died in 1829, the translator must be pardoned for pointing out here an anachronism, unless we are to assume that the learned Professor's celebrity dawned in his earliest years.