navigator. His life is not the kind of thing one would like
to put into the hands of young people; rather, one would do
one's utmost to keep it from their knowledge, as a red flag of
adventure and disintegrating influence in life. The time
would fail me if I were to recite all the big names in history
whose exploits are perfectly irrational and even shocking to
the business mind. The incongruity is speaking; and I imagine
it must engender among the mediocrities a very peculiar
attitude, towards the nobler and showier sides of national
life. They will read of the Charge of Balaclava in much the
same spirit as they assist at a performance of the LYONS MAIL.
Persons of substance take in the TIMES and sit composedly in
pit or boxes according to the degree of their prosperity in
business. As for the generals who go galloping up and down
among bomb-shells in absurd cocked hats - as for the actors
who raddle their faces and demean themselves for hire upon the
stage - they must belong, thank God! to a different order of
beings, whom we watch as we watch the clouds careering in the
windy, bottomless inane, or read about like characters in
ancient and rather fabulous annals. Our offspring would no
more think of copying their behaviour, let us hope, than of
doffing their clothes and painting themselves blue in
consequence of certain admissions in the first chapter of
their school history of England.

Discredited as they are in practice, the cowardly
proverbs hold their own in theory; and it is another instance
of the same spirit, that the opinions of old men about life
have been accepted as final. All sorts of allowances are made
for the illusions of youth; and none, or almost none, for the