my mind; and I should fold up my papers, and watch the turnips grow
in that field there, with a placidity that would, perhaps, seem very
spiritless to your now restless and ambitious nature, Ellesmere.

Ellesmere. If something were to happen which will not, then--O
Philosophy, Philosophy, you, too, are a good old nurse, and rattle
your rattles for your little people, as well as old Dame World can
do for hers. But what are we to have to-day for our first reading?

Milverton. An Essay on Truth.

Ellesmere. Well, had I known this before, it is not the novelty of
the subject which would have dragged me up the hill to your house.
By the way, philosophers ought not to live upon hills. They are
much more accessible, and I think quite as reasonable, when,
Diogenes-like, they live in tubs upon flat ground. Now for the
essay.

TRUTH.

Truth is a subject which men will not suffer to grow old. Each age
has to fight with its own falsehoods: each man with his love of
saying to himself and those around him pleasant things and things
serviceable for to-day, rather than the things which are. Yet a
child appreciates at once the divine necessity for truth; never
asks, "What harm is there in saying the thing that is not?" and an
old man finds, in his growing experience, wider and wider
applications of the great doctrine and discipline of truth.

Truth needs the wisdom of the serpent as well as the simplicity of