the government of a province. When perplexed with public business, he would often declare that it would be easier for him to go back to his broad He left behind him a character for axe again. probity, honesty, patriotism, and courage, which is certainly not the least noble inheritance of the house of Normanby.
William Petty, the founder of the house of Lansdowne, was a man of like energy and public usefulness in his day. He was the son of a clothier in humble circumstances, at Romsey, in Hampshire, where he was born in 1623. In his boyhood he obtained a tolerable education at the grammar school of his native town; after which he determined to improve himself by study at the University of Caen, in Normandy. Whilst there he contrived to support himself unassisted by his father, carrying on a sort of small pedler's trade with "a little stock of merchandise." Returning to England, he had himself bound apprentice to a sea captain, who "drubbed him with a rope's end" for the badness of his sight. He left the navy in disgust, taking to the study of medicine. When at Paris he engaged in dissection, during which time he also drew diagrams for Hobbes, who was then writing his treatise on Optics. He was reduced to such poverty that he subsisted for two or three weeks entirely on walnuts. But again he began to trade in a small way, turning an honest penny, and he was enabled shortly to return to England with money in his pocket. Being of an ingenious mechanical turn, we find him taking out a patent for a letter-copying machine. He began to write upon the arts and sciences, and practised chemistry and physic with such success that his reputation shortly
