ready to be used in succession: he then commenced his usual afternoon's
employment of smoking, thinking, and writing, which he continued for
several hours. When thus engaged he was frequently visited by foreigners
of distinction, who were attracted to Chatsworth chiefly by the
celebrity which Hobbes had acquired amongst the learned and the great.
St. Evermond, in one of his letters to Waller, which is dated from
Chatsworth, details some interesting particulars of this extraordinary
man, whom he found, as he expresses it, "like Jupiter, involved in
clouds of his own raising." He says,

"I now write to you from the Earl of Devonshire's, where I have been
this fortnight past, paying my devotions to the Genius of Nature.
Nothing can be more romantic than this country except the region about
Valois, and nothing can equal this place in beauty but the borders of
the Lake.

"It was not, however, so much the desire of seeing natural curiosities
that drew me hither: there is a certain moral curiosity under this roof
which I have long wished to see, and my lord Devonshire had the goodness
to indulge me by a very kind invitation: I need not tell you that I mean
the great philosopher Mr. Hobbes, so distinguished for the singularity
of his sentiments and disposition. I arrived a little before dinner,
notwithstanding which the earl told me he believed I was too late to see
Mr. Hobbes that day. 'As he does not think like other men,' said his
lordship, 'it is his opinion that he should not live like other men; I
suppose he dined about two hours ago, and he is now shut up for the rest
of the day: your only time to see him is in the morning, but then he
walks so fast up those hills that unless you are mounted on one of my
ablest hunters you will not keep pace with him.' It was not long before
I obtained an audience extraordinary of this literary potentate, whom I