is, that each of those personages believes that Providence has bestowed
on him an elder son's inheritance of wisdom. Nor, were we to glance
towards the obscurer paths of life, should we find good Parson Dale deem
himself worse off than the rest of the world in this precious commodity,
--as, indeed, he has signally evinced of late in that shrewd guess of his
touching Professor Moss. Even plain Squire Hazeldean takes it for
granted that he could teach Audley Egerton a thing or two worth knowing
in politics; Mr. Stirn thinks that there is no branch of useful lore on
which he could not instruct the squire; while Sprott the tinker, with his
bag full of tracts and lucifer matches, regards the whole framework of
modern society, from a rick to a constitution, with the profound disdain
of a revolutionary philosopher. Considering that every individual thus
brings into the stock of the world so vast a share of intelligence, it
cannot but excite our wonder to find that Oxenstiern is popularly held to
be right when he said, "See, my son, how little wisdom it requires to
govern States,"--that is, Men! That so many millions of persons, each
with a profound assurance that he is possessed of an exalted sagacity,
should concur in the ascendancy of a few inferior intellects, according
to a few stupid, prosy, matter-of-fact rules as old as the hills, is a
phenomenon very discreditable to the spirit and energy of the aggregate
human species! It creates no surprise that one sensible watch-dog should
control the movements of a flock of silly grass-eating sheep; but that
two or three silly grass-eating sheep should give the law to whole flocks
of such mighty sensible watch-dogs--/Diavolo!/ Dr. Riecabocca, explain
that, if you can! And wonderfully strange it is, that notwithstanding
all the march of enlightenment, notwithstanding our progressive
discoveries in the laws of Nature, our railways, steam-engines, animal
magnetism, and electrobiology,--we have never made any improvement that
is generally acknowledged, since men ceased to be troglodytes and nomads,
in the old-fashioned gamut of flats and sharps, which attunes into