burgh, town, or shire,--in a word, did you ever resign your private
comforts as men in order to share the public troubles of mankind? If
ever you have so far departed from the Lucretian philosophy, just look
back--was it life at all that you lived? Were you an individual distinct
existence,--a passenger in the railway,--or were you merely an indistinct
portion of that common flaine which heated the boiler and generated the
steam that set off the monster train?--very hot, very active, very
useful, no doubt; but all your identity fused in flame, and all your
forces vanishing in gas.

And do you think the people in the railway carriages care for you? Do
you think that the gentleman in the worsted wrapper is saying to his
neighbour with the striped rug on his comfortable knees, "How grateful we
ought to be for that fiery particle which is crackling and hissing under
the boiler. It helps us on a fraction of an inch from Vauxhall to
Putney!" Not a bit of it. Ten to one but he is saying, "Not sixteen
miles an hour! What the deuce is the matter with the stoker?"

Look at our friend Audley Egerton. You have just had a glimpse of the
real being that struggles under the huge copper; you have heard the
hollow sound of the rich man's coffers under the tap of Baron Levy's
friendly knuckle, heard the strong man's heart give out its dull warning
sound to the scientific ear of Dr. F-----. And away once more vanishes
the separate existence, lost again in the flame that heats the boiler,
and the smoke that curls into air from the grimy furnace.

Look to it, O Public Man, whoever thou art, and whatsoever thy degree,--
see if thou canst not compound matters, so as to keep a little nook apart
for thy private life; that is, for thyself! Let the Great Popkins
Question not absorb wholly the individual soul of thee, as Smith or