THE GOOSE.

'IMPOSSIBLE': of a certain two-legged animal with feathers it is said, if you draw a distinct chalk-circle round him, he sits imprisoned, as if girt with the iron ring of Fate; and will die there, though within sight of victuals, or sit in sick misery there, and be fatted to death. The name of this poor two-legged animal . is—Goose; and they make of him, when well fattened, Paté de foie gras, much prized by some! -P. & P. III. 2.

PERSEVERANCE.

THE 'tendency to persevere,' to persist in spite of hindrances, discouragements and 'impossibilities': it is this that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak. -P. & P. IV. 5.

THE DUNCE.

THE crabbed old Schoolmaster used to ask, when they brought him a new pupil, "But are you sure he's not a dunce?" Why really one might ask the same thing in regard to every man proposed for whatsoever function; and consider it as the one inquiry needful: Are you sure he's not a dunce? There is, in this world, no other entirely fatal person. -H. III. Shakespeare.

THE GIFTED MAN.

THE gifted man is he who sees the essential point, and leaves all the rest aside as surplusage: it is his faculty. too, the man of business's faculty that he discern the true likeness, not the false superficial one, of the thing he has got to work in. And how much of morality is in the kind of insight we get of anything; 'the eye seeing in all things what it brought with it the faculty of seeing!' To the mean eye all things are trivial, as certainly as to the jaundiced they are yellow. Raphael, the Painters tell us, is the best of all Portrait-painters withal. No most gifted eye can exhaust the significance of any object. In the commonest human face there lies more than Raphael will take away with him.

-H. III. Dante.

THE CONDITIONS OF KNOWLEDGE.

THE real quantity of our insight-how justly and thoroughly we shall comprehend the nature of a thing, especially of a human being-depends on our patience, our fairness, lovingness, what strength soever we have: intellect comes from the whole man, as it is the light that enlightens the whole man. -M. Mirabeau.

To know a thing, what we call knowing, a man must first love the thing, sympathise with it: that is be virtuously related to it. If he have not the justice to put down his own selfishness at every turn, the courage to stand by the dangerous-true at every turn, how shall he know? His virtues, all of them, will lie recorded in his knowledge. Nature, with her truth, remains to the bad, to the selfish and the pusillanimous forever a sealed book: what such can know of Nature is mean, superficial, small; for the uses of the day merely. -H. III. Shakspeare.

THE FOX.

BUT does not the very Fox know something of nature? Exactly so: it knows where the geese lodge! The human Reynard, very frequent everywhere in the world, what more does he know but this and the like of this? Nay, it should be considered too, that if the Fox had not a certain vulpine morality, he could not even know where the geese were, or get at the geese! If he spent his time in splenetic, atrabiliar reflections on his own misery, his ill usage by Nature, Fortune and other Foxes, and so forth; and had not courage, promptitude, practicability, and other suitable vulpine gifts and graces, he would catch no geese. We may say of the Fox too, that his morality and insight are of the same dimensions; different faces of the same internal unity of vulpine life! These things are worth stating; for the contrary of them acts with manifold very baleful per

version, in this time: what limitations, modifications they require, your own candor will supply. -H. III. Shakspeare.

STUPIDITY.

PURE Stupidity, indeed, is of a quiet nature, and content to be merely stupid. But seldom do we find it pure; seldom unadulterated with some tincture of ambition, which drives it into new and strange metamorphoses. Here it has assumed a contemptuous trenchant air, intended to represent superior tact, and a sort of all-wisdom; there a truculent atrabilious scowl, which is to stand for passionate strength: now we have an outpouring of tumid fervour; now a fruitless, asthmatic hunting after wit and humour. Grave or gay, enthusiastic or derisive, admiring or despising, the dull man would be something which he is not and cannot be.

-M. German Literature.

THE ENEMY.

FOR the one enemy we have in this Universe is Stupidity, Darkness of Mind; of which darkness, again, there are many sources, every sin a source, and probably self-conceit the chief source. Darkness of mind, in every kind and variety, does to a really tragic extent. abound: but of all the kinds of darkness, surely the Pedant darkness, which asserts and believes itself to be light, is the most formidable to mankind! For empires or for individuals there is but one class of men to be trembled at; and that is the Stupid Class, the class that cannot see, who alas are they mainly that will not

THE FOOLISHEST MAN IN THE EARTH.

No known Head so wooden, but there might be other heads to which it were a genius and Friar Bacon's Oracle.-For, observe, though there is a greatest Fool, as a superlative in every kind; and the most foolish man in

the Earth is now indubitably living and breathing, and did this morning or lately eat breakfast, and is even now digesting the same; and looks out on the world, with his dim horn-eyes, and inwardly forms some unspeakable theory thereof; yet where shall the authentically Existing be personally met with! Can one of us, otherwise than by guess, know that we have got sight of him, have orally communed with him! To take even the narrower sphere of this our English Metropolis, can any one confidently say to himself, that he has conversed with the identical, individual Stupidest man now extant in London? No one. Deep as we dive in the Profound, there is ever a new depth opens: where the ultimate bottom may lie, through what new scenes of being we must pass before reaching it (except that we know it does lie somewhere, and might by human faculty and opportunity be reached), is altogether a mystery to us. Strange, tantalising pursuit! We have the fullest assurance, not only that there is a Stupidest of London men actually resident, with bed and board of some kind, in London; but that several persons have been or perhaps are now speaking face to face with him: while for us, chase it as we may, such scientific blessedness will too probably be forever denied! Biography.

MANKIND AND SHEEP.

-M.

THE servile imitancy, and yet also a nobler relationship and mysterious union to one another which lies in such imitancy, of Mankind might be illustrated under the figure, itself nowise original, of a Flock of Sheep. Sheep go in flocks for three reasons: First, because they are of a gregarious temper, and love to be together: Secondly, because of their cowardice; they are afraid to be left alone: Thirdly, because the common run of them are dull of sight, to a proverb, and can have no choice of roads; sheep can in fact see nothing; in a celestial

Luminary, and a scoured pewter Tankard, would discern only that both dazzled them, and were of unspeakable glory. How like their fellow creatures of the human species! Men too, as was from the first maintained here, are gregarious; then surely faint-hearted enough, trembling to be left by themselves; above all, dull-sighted, down to the verge of utter blindness. Thus are we seen ever running in torrents, and mobs, if we run at all; and after what foolish scoured Tankards, mistaking them for Suns! Foolish Turnip-lanterns likewise, to all appearance supernatural, keep whole nations quaking, their hair on end. Neither know we, except by blind habit, where the good pastures lie: solely when the sweet grass is between our teeth, we know it, and chew it; also when grass is bitter and scant, we know it,—and bleat and butt: these last two facts we know of a truth and in very deed. Thus do Men and Sheep play their parts on this Nether Earth; wandering restlessly in large masses, they know not whither; for most part, each following his neighbour and his own nose.

Nevertheless, not always; look better, you shall find certain that do, in some small degree, know whither. Sheep have their Bell-wether; some ram of the folds, endued with more valour, with clearer vision than other sheep; he leads them through the wolds, by height and hollow, to the woods and water-courses, for covert or for pleasant provender; courageously marching, and if need be leaping, and with hoof and horn doing battle, in the van: him they courageously and with assured heart follow. Touching it is, as every herdsman will inform you, with what chivalrous devotedness these wooly Hosts adhere to their Wether; and rush after him, through good report and through bad report, were it into safe shelters and green thymy nooks, or into asphaltic lakes and the jaws of devouring lions. Ever also must we recall that fact which we owe Jean Paul's