yet the name of Catharine, which he gave to one of his daughters, may be imagined to imply as much.  His mother, whose maiden name was Mignard, was of the family of the celebrated painter.  It was the accident of Parr’s birthplace that, probably, laid the foundation of his fame, for to the school of his native village, then one of the most flourishing in England, he was sent in his sixth year; whilst, under other circumstances, it is likely that he would have been condemned to an ordinary education and his father’s business.  So many seeds is Nature constantly and secretly scattering, in order that one may fall upon a spot that shall foster it into a a plant.  In his boyhood, he is described by his sister, Mrs. Bowyear, as studious after his kind, delighting in Mother Goose and the Seven Champions, and not partaking much in the sports usual to such an age.  He had a very early inclination for the church, and the elements of that taste for ecclesiastical pomp, which distinguished him in after life, appeared when he was not more than nine or ten years old.  He would put on one of his father’s shirts for a surplice, (till Mr. Sanders, the vicar, supplied him, as Hannah did his namesake, with a little gown and cassock;) he would then read the church service to his sister and cousins, after they had been duly summoned by a bell tied to the banisters; preach them a sermon, which his congregation was apt to think, in those days, somewhat of the longest; and even, in spite of his father’s remonstrances, would bury a bird or a kitten (Parr had always a great fondness for animals) with the rites of Christian burial.  Samuel was his mother’s darling; she indulged all his whims, consulted his appetite, and provided hot suppers for him almost from his cradle.  He was her only son, and was at this time very fair and well-favoured.  Providence, however, foreseeing that at all events vanity was to be a large ingredient in Parr’s composition, sent him, in its mercy, a fit of small-pox; and, with the same intent, perhaps, deprived him of a parent, who was killing her son’s character by kindness.  Parr never was a boy, says, somewhere, his friend and school-fellow, Dr. Bennet.  When he was about nine years old, Dr. Allen saw him sitting on the churchyard gate at Harrow, with great gravity, whilst his school-fellows were all at play.  “Sam. why don’t you play with the others?” cried Allen.  “Do not you know, sir,” said he, with vast solemnity, “that I am to be a parson?” And Parr himself used to tell of Sir W. Jones, another of his school-fellows, that as they were one day walking together near Harrow, Jones suddenly stopped short, and, looking hard at him, cried out, “Parr, if you should have the good luck to live forty years, you may stand a chance of overtaking your face.”  Between Bennet, Parr, and Jones, the closest intimacy was formed; and though occasionally tried, it continued to the last.  Sir W. Jones, indeed, was soon carried, by the tide of events, far away from the other two, and Dr. Bennet quickly shot a-head of poor Parr in the race of life, and rose to the Irish bench.