in the middle. A fourth, looking wild and dreamy, as if he had come out
of the cave of Trophonius, and who is a mesmerizer and a mystic, thinks
Enlightenment is in full career towards the good old days of alchemists
and necromancers. A fifth, whom one might take for a Quaker, asserts
that the march of Enlightenment is a crusade for universal philanthropy,
vegetable diet, and the perpetuation of peace by means of speeches, which
certainly do produce a very contrary effect from the Philippics of
Demosthenes! The sixth--good fellow without a rag on his back--does not
care a straw where the march goes. He can't be worse off than he is; and
it is quite immaterial to him whether he goes to the dog-star above, or
the bottomless pit below. I say nothing, however, against the march,
while we take it altogether. Whatever happens, one is in good company;
and though I am somewhat indolent by nature, and would rather stay at
home with Locke and Burke (dull dogs though they were) than have my
thoughts set off helter-skelter with those cursed trumpets and drums,
blown and dub-a-dubbed by fellows whom I vow to heaven I would not trust
with a five-pound note,--still, if I must march, I must; and so deuce
take the hindmost! But when it comes to individual marchers upon their
own account,--privateers and condottieri of Enlightenment,--who have
filled their pockets with Lucifer matches, and have a sublime contempt
for their neighbour's barns and hay-ricks, I don't see why I should throw
myself into the seventh heaven of admiration and ecstasy.

If those who are eternally rhapsodizing on the celestial blessings that
are to follow Enlightenment, Universal Knowledge, and so forth, would
just take their eyes out of their pockets, and look about them, I would
respectfully inquire if they have never met any very knowing and
enlightened gentleman, whose acquaintance is by no means desirable. If
not, they are monstrous lucky. Every man must judge by his own
experience; and the worst rogues I have ever encountered were amazingly