universal philanthropy, vegetable diet, and the perpetuation of peace, by means of speeches, which certainly do produce a very contrary effect from the Philippics of Demosthenes! The sixth--(good fellow, without a rag on his back)--does not care a straw where the march goes. He can't be worse off than he is; and it is quite immaterial to him whether he goes to the dogstar above, or the bottomless pit below. I say nothing, however, against the march, while we take it all together. Whatever happens, one is in good company; and though I am somewhat indolent by nature, and would rather stay at home with Locke and Burke (dull dogs though they were), than have my thoughts set off helter-skelter with those cursed trumpets and drums, blown and dub-a-dubbed by fellows that I vow to Heaven I would not trust with a five-pound note--still, if I must march, I must; and so deuce take the hindmost. But when it comes to individual marchers upon their own account--privateers and condottieri of Enlightenment--who have filled their pockets with lucifer-matches, and have a sublime contempt for their neighbors' barns and hay-ricks, I don't see why I should throw myself into the seventh heaven of admiration and ecstasy. If those who are eternally rhapsodizing on the celestial blessings that are to follow Enlightenment, Universal Knowledge, and so forth, would just take their eyes out of their pockets, and look about them, I would respectfully inquire if they have never met any very knowing and enlightened gentleman, whose acquaintance is by no means desirable. If not, they are monstrous lucky. Every man must judge by his own experience; and the worst rogues I have ever encountered were amazingly well-informed, clever fellows! From dunderheads and dunces we can protect ourselves; but from your sharp-witted gentleman, all enlightenment and no prejudice, we have but to cry, "Heaven defend us!" It is true, that the rogue (let him be ever so enlightened) usually comes to no good himself (though not before he has done harm enough to his neighbors). But that only shows that the world wants something else in those it rewards, besides intelligence _per se_ and in the abstract; and is much too old a world to allow any Jack Horner to pick out its plums for his own personal gratification. Hence a man of very moderate intelligence, who believes in God, suffers his heart to beat with human sympathies, and keeps his eyes off your strong-box, will perhaps gain a vast deal more power than knowledge ever gives to a rogue.