who knows how snug, dry, and warm a gentleman's horses are kept,
and how often with all that they are unfit for their duty, will
wonder to see poor cab horses shivering on the stand hour after
hour on a winter day, and will feel something of respect mingle
with his pity for the thin, patient, serviceable screws. Horses
that are lame, broken-winded, and vicious, pull the great bulk of
all the weight that horses pull. And they get through their work
somehow. Not long since, sitling on the box of a highland coach of
most extraordinary shape, I travelled through Glenorchy and along
Loch Awe side. The horses were wretched to look at, yet they took
the coach at a good pace over that very up and down road, which
was divided into very long stages. At last, amid a thick wood of
dwarf oaks, the coach stopped to receive its final team. It was an
extraordinary place for a coach to change horses. There was not a
house near: the horses had walked three miles from their stable.
They were by far the best team that had drawn the coach that day.
Four tall greys, nearly white with age; but they looked well and went
well, checking the coach stoutly as they went down the precipitous
descents, and ascending the opposite hills at a tearing gallop.
No doubt you could see various things amiss. They were blowing a
little; one or two were rather blind; and all four a little stiff
at starting. They were all screws. The dearest of them had not cost
the coach proprietor seven pounds; yet how well they went over the
eleven-mile stage into Inverary!

Now in like manner, a great part of the mental work that is done,
is done by men who mentally are screws. The practical every-day
work of life is done, and respectably done, by very silly, weak,
prejudiced people. Mr. Carlyle has stated, that the population of
Britain consists of 'seventeen millions of people, mostly fools.'