Many a marvellous tale many a scandalous anecdote, owes its origin to this incapacity. The narrater relates, not what he saw or heard, but the impression which he derived from what he saw or heard, and of which perhaps the greater part consisted of inference, though the whole is related not as inference but as matter-of-fact. The difficulty of inducing witnesses to restrain, within any moderate limits, the intermixture of their inferences with the narrative of their perceptions, is well known to experienced cross-examiners; and still more is this the case when ignorant persons attempt to describe any natural phenomenon. "The simplest narrative," says Dugald Stewart, "of the most illiterate observer involves more or less of hypothesis nay, in general, it will be found that, in proportion to his ignorance, the greater is the number of conjectural principle involved in his statements. A village apothecary (and, if possible, in a still greater degree, an experienced nurse) is seldom able to describe; the plainest case, without employing a phraseology of which every word is a theory; whereas a simple and genuine specification of the phenomena which mark a particular disease--a specification unsophisticated by fancy, or by preconceived opinions, may be regarded as unequivocal evidence of a mind trained by long and successful study to the most difficult of all arts, that of the faithful _interpretation_ of nature."'* * Logic, pp. 408-9, vol. 2. It is in judgments formed, in reprehensible indifference to the actual facts of the case, that party rancour and the proverbial injustice of popular political opinion take their rise. A useful caution on this head is pronounced by Lord Brougham in his sketch of the life of Lord Wellesley:--'How often do we see,' observes his lordship, 'vehement: and unceasing; attacks made upon a minister or a statesman, perhaps not in the public service, for something which he does not choose to defend or explain, resting his claims to the confidence of his countrymen upon his past exertions and his known character. Yet these assaults are unremittingly made upon him, and the people believe that so much noise could not be stirred up without something to authorise it. Sometimes the objects of the calumny are silent from disdain; sometimes from knowing that the base propagators of it will only return to their slander the more eagerly alter their conviction of falsehood; but sometimes, also, the silencer may be owing to official reserve, of which we see a most remarkable instance in the ease of Lord Wellesly.'