He used to spend hours together in taming pigeons; he inspired them with such confidence that they would follow him about, and allow him to take them wherever he would, and the moment that he appeared in the garden two or three of them would instantly settle on his arms or his head.

The bees, too, gradually came to put the same trust in him, and his whole life was surrounded with gentle companionship.

He always began the day with the sun, walking on the high ridge above the slope on which the house lay, and going through his form of worship.

"It did not consist in a vain moving of the lips, but in a sincere elevation of heart to the author of the tender nature whose beauties lay spread out before my eyes.

This act passed rather in wonder and contemplation than in requests; and I always knew that with the dispenser of true blessings, the best means of obtaining those which are needful for us, is less to ask than to deserve them."[80] These effusions may be taken for the beginning of the deistical reaction in the eighteenth century.