illustration--of those niceties of learning which spring from a taste cultivated to the last exquisite polish--the book amused, and allured, and charmed; and erudition lost its pedantry now in the simplicity of Montaigne, now in the penetration of La Bruyère. He lived in each time of which he wrote, and the time lived again in him. Ah, what a writer of romances he would have been, if--if what? If he had had as sad an experience of men's passions, as he had the happy intuition into their humours. But he who would see the mirror of the shore, must look where it is cast on the river, not the ocean. The narrow stream reflects the gnarled tree, and the pausing herd, and the village spire, and the romance of the landscape. But the sea reflects only the vast outline of the headland, and the lights of the eternal heaven. CHAPTER XI. "It is Lombard Street to a China orange," quoth Uncle Jack. "Are the odds in favour of fame against failure so great? You do not speak, I fear, from experience, brother Jack," answered my father, as he stooped down to tickle the duck under the left ear. "But Jack Tibbets is not Augustine Caxton. Jack Tibbets is not a scholar, a genius, a wond--" "Stop," cried my father. "After all," said Mr Squills, "though I am no flatterer, Mr Tibbets is not so far out.... That part of your book which compares the crania or skulls of the different races is superb. Lawrence or Dr Pritchard could not have done the thing more neatly. Such a book must not be lost to the world; and I agree with Mr Tibbets that you should publish as soon as possible." "It is one thing to write and another to publish," said my father irresolutely. "When one considers all the great men who have published; when one thinks one is going to intrude one's-self audaciously into the company of Aristotle and Bacon, of Locke, of Herder--of all the grave philosophers who bend over nature with brows weighty with thought--one may well pause, and--" "Pooh!" interrupted Uncle Jack; "science is not a club, it is an ocean. It is open to the cockboat as the frigate. One man carries across it a freightage of ingots, another may fish there for herrings. Who can exhaust the sea? who say to intellect, the deeps of philosophy are preoccupied?" "Admirable!" cried Squills. "So it is really your advice, my friends," said my father, who seemed struck by Uncle Jack's eloquent illustration, "that I should desert my household gods; remove to London, since my own library ceases to supply my wants; take lodgings near the British Museum, and finish off one volume, at least, incontinently." "It is a duty you owe to your country," said Uncle Jack, solemnly.