removal, had no doubt contributed to make time pass lightly over
him. The original and more potent causes, however, lay in the
rare perfection of his animal nature, the moderate proportion of
intellect, and the very trifling admixture of moral and
spiritual ingredients; these latter qualities, indeed, being in
barely enough measure to keep the old gentleman from walking on
all-fours. He possessed no power of thought, no depth of
feeling, no troublesome sensibilities: nothing, in short, but a
few commonplace instincts, which, aided by the cheerful temper
which grew inevitably out of his physical well-being, did duty
very respectably, 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