commerce with any class of his fellow-creatures, his information about
them is extremely confused and superficial. The best naturalists are
mere generalizers, and think they have done a vast deal when they
classify a species. What should we know about mankind if we had only
a naturalist's definition of man? We only know mankind by knocking
classification on the head, and studying each man as a class in himself.
Compare Buffon and Shakspeare! Alas, sir! can we never have a
Shakspeare for house-flies and minnows?"

GEORGE MORLEY.--"With all respect for minnows and house-flies, if we
found another Shakspeare, he might be better employed, like his
predecessor, in selecting individualities from the classifications of
man."

WAIFE.--"Being yourself a man, you think so: a housefly might be of a
different opinion. But permit me, at least, to doubt whether such an
investigator would be better employed in reference to his own happiness,
though I grant that he would be so in reference to your intellectual
amusement and social interests. Poor Shakspeare! How much he must have
suffered!"

GEORGE MORLEY.--"You mean that he must have been racked by the passions
he describes,--bruised by collision with the hearts he dissects. That is
not necessary to genius. The judge on his bench, summing up evidence and
charging the jury, has no need to have shared the temptations or been
privy to the acts of the prisoner at the bar. Yet how consummate may be
his analysis!"

"No," cried Waife, roughly. "No! Your illustration destroys your
argument. The judge knows nothing of the prisoner. There are the