I would willingly offer him a place of comfortable retirement, when he is extricated from his present situation." "I fear, my lord," said Oldbuck, "he would have difficulty in reconciling his vagrant habits to the acceptance of your bounty, at least I know the experiment has been tried without effect.

To beg from the public at large he considers as independence, in comparison to drawing his whole support from the bounty of an individual.

He is so far a true philosopher, as to be a contemner of all ordinary rules of hours and times.

When he is hungry he eats; when thirsty he drinks; when weary he sleeps; and with such indifference with respect to the means and appliances about which we make a fuss, that I suppose he was never ill dined or ill lodged in his life.

Then he is, to a certain extent, the oracle of the district through which he travels--their genealogist, their newsman, their master of the revels, their doctor at a pinch, or their divine;--I promise you he has too many duties, and is too zealous in performing them, to be easily bribed to abandon his calling.