Apparent plagiarisms frequently arise from an author's self-repetition. He finds that something he has already published has fallen dead--been overlooked--or that it is peculiarly _a propos_ to another subject now under discussion. He therefore introduces the passage; often without allusion to his having printed it before; and sometimes he introduces it into an anonymous article. An anonymous writer is thus, now and then, unjustly accused of plagiarism--when the sin is merely that of self-repetition. In the present case, however, there has been a deliberate plagiarism of the silliest as well as meanest species. Trusting to the obscurity of his original, the plagiarist has fallen upon the idea of killing two birds with one stone--of dispensing with all disguise but that of _decoration_. Channing says "order"--the writer in the New Monthly says "grade." The former says that this order is "far from holding," etc.--the latter says it is "_very_ far from holding." The one says that military talent is "_not_ conversant," and so on--the other says "it is _never made_ conversant." The one speaks of "the highest and richest objects"--the other of "the more delicate and abstruse." Channing speaks of "thought"--the thief of "mental operations." Chaming mentions "intelligence of the _highest_ order"--the thief will have it of "the highest _and rarest_." Channing observes that military talent is often "_almost_ wholly wanting," etc.--the thief maintains it to be "_wholly_ wanting." Channing alludes to "_large_ views of human nature"--the thief can be content with nothing less than "enlarged" ones. Finally, the American having been satisfied with a reference to "subjects which have absorbed the most glorious understandings," the Cockney puts him to shame at once by discoursing about "subjects which have _occupied and_ absorbed the most glorious _of human_ understandings"--as if one could be absorbed, without being occupied, by a subject--as if "_of_" were here any thing more than two superfluous letters--and as if there were any chance of the reader's supposing that the understandings in question were the understandings of frogs, or jackasses, or Johnny Bulls. By the way, in a case of this kind, whenever there is a question as to who is the original and who the plagiarist, the point may be determined, almost invariably, by observing which passage is amplified, or exaggerated, in tone. To disguise his stolen horse, the uneducated thief cuts off the tail; but the educated thief prefers tying on a new tail at the end of the old one, and painting them both sky blue. * * * * * After reading all that has been written, and after thinking all that can be thought, on the topics of God and the soul, the man who has a right to say that he thinks at all, will find himself face to face with the conclusion that, on these topics, the most profound thought is that which can be the least easily distinguished from the most superficial sentiment.