Lest the reader should suppose we are drawing caricatures, instead of representing an actual condition of society, it may be necessary to explain that Mr. Bragg was a standing candidate for popular favour; that, like Mr. Dodge, he considered every thing that presented itself in the name of the public, as sacred and paramount, and that so general and positive was his deference for majorities, that it was the bias of his mind to think half-a-dozen always in the right, as opposed to one, although that one, agreeably to the great decision of the real majority of the entire community, had not only the law on his side, but all the abstract merits of the disputed question. In short, to such a pass of freedom had Mr. Bragg, in common with a large class of his countrymen, carried his notions, that he had really begun to imagine liberty was all means and no end. Chapter XII. "In sooth, thou wast in very gracious fooling last night, when thou spokest of Pigrogromotus, of the Vapians passing the equinoctial of Queubus; 't was very good i' faith."--SIR ANDREW AGUE-CHEEK. The progress of society, it has just been said, in what is termed a "new country," is a little anomalous. At the commencement of a settlement, there is much of that sort of kind feeling and mutual interest, which men are apt to manifest towards each other, when they are embarked in an enterprise of common hazards. The distance that is unavoidably inseparable from education, habits and manners, is lessened by mutual wants and mutual efforts; and the gentleman, even while he may maintain his character and station, maintains them with that species of good-fellowship and familiarity, that marks the intercourse between the officer and the soldier, in an arduous campaign. Men, and even women, break bread together, and otherwise commingle, that, in different circumstances, would be strangers; the hardy adventures and rough living of the forest, apparently lowering the pretensions of the man of cultivation and mere mental resources, to something very near the level of those of the man of physical energy, and manual skill. In this rude intercourse, the parties meet, as it might be, on a sort of neutral ground, one yielding some of his superiority, and the other laying claims to an outward show of equality, that he secretly knows, however, is the result of the peculiar circumstances in which he is placed. In short, the state of society is favourable to the claims of mere animal force, and unfavourable to those of the higher qualities.