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The Recreations of a Country Parson by Andrew Kennedy Hutchison Boyd
page 32 of 418 (07%)
time starve and at another drive his carriage and four. When poor
Edmund Kean was acting in barns to country bumpkins, and barely
rinding bread for his wife and child, he was just as great a genius
as when he was crowding Drury Lane. When Brougham presided in the
House of Lords, he was not a bit better or greater than when he
had hung about in the Parliament House at Edinburgh, a briefless
and suspected junior barrister. When all London crowded to see the
hippopotamus, he was just the animal that he was a couple of years
later, when no one took the trouble of looking at him. And when
George Stephenson died, amid the applause and gratitude of all the
intelligent men in Britain, he was the same man, maintaining the
same principle, as when men of science and of law regarded as a
mischievous lunatic the individual who declared that some day the
railroad would be the king's highway, and mail-coaches would be
drawn by steam.

As to the very highest prizes of human affairs, it is, I believe,
admitted on all hands, that these generally fall to second-rate
men. Civilized nations have found it convenient entirely to give
up the hallucination that the monarch is the greatest, wisest, and
best man in his dominions. Nobody supposes that. And in the case
of hereditary dynasties, such an end is not even aimed at. But it
is curious to find how with elective sovereignties it is just the
same way. The great statesmen of America have very rarely attained
to the dignity of President of the United States. Not Clays and
Webstcrs have had their four years at the White House. And even
Cardinal Wiseman candidly tells us that the post which is regarded
by millions as the highest which can be held by mortal, is all but
systematically given to judicious mediocrity. A great genius will
never be Pope. The coach must not be trusted to too dashing a
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