_Ellesmere_. Men of great genius are often such a sensitive race, so apt to be miserable in many other than pecuniary ways and want of public estimation, that I am not sure that distress and neglect do not take their minds off worse discomforts. It is a kind of grievance, too, that they like to have. _Dunsford_. Really, Ellesmere, that is a most unfeeling speech. _Milverton_. At any rate, it is right for us to honour and serve a great man. It is our nature to do so, if we are worth anything. We may put aside the question whether our honour will do him more good than our neglect. That is a question for him to look to. The world has not yet so largely honoured deserving men in their own time, that we can exactly pronounce what effect it would have upon them. _Ellesmere_. Come, Rollo, let us leave these men of sentiment. Oh, you will not go, as your master does not move. Look how he wags his tail, and almost says, “I should clearly like to have a hunt after the water-rat we saw in the pond the other day, but master is talking philosophy, and requires an intelligent audience.” These dogs are dear creatures, it must be owned. Come, Milverton, let us have a walk. CHAPTER X. AFTER the reading in the last chapter, my friends walked homewards with me as far as Durley Wood, which is about half-way between Worth-Ashton and my house. As we rested here, we bethought ourselves that it would be a pleasant spot for us to come to sometimes and read our essays. So we agreed to name a day for meeting there. The day was favourable, we met as we had appointed, and finding some beech logs lying very opportunely, took possession of them for our council. We seated Ellesmere on one that we called the woolsack, but which he said he felt himself unworthy to occupy in the presence of King Log, pointing to mine. These nice points of etiquette being at last settled, Milverton drew out his papers and was about to begin reading, when Ellesmere thus interrupted him:— _Ellesmere_. You were not in earnest, Milverton, about giving us an essay on population? Because if so, I think I shall leave this place to you and Dunsford and the ants. _Milverton_. I certainly have been meditating something of the sort; but have not been able to make much of it. _Ellesmere_. If I had been living in those days when it first beamed upon mankind that the earth was round, I am sure I should have said, “We know now the bounds of the earth: there are no interminable plains joined to the regions of the sun, allowing of indefinite sketchy outlines at the edges of maps. That little creature man will immediately begin to think that his world is too small for him.” _Milverton_. There has probably been as much folly uttered by political economy as against it, which is saying something. The danger as regards theories of political economy is the obvious one of their abstract conclusions being applied to concrete things.