traced such a mixture of design and of chance in any other subject it would lead to some curious speculations on the implied limitations of the directing Intellect. And in private matters it is the same; the extraordinary blunders and oversights in common trade work show that the most obvious details have not had a minute's real thought given to their arrangement. The result is an accumulation of difficulty and muddle which cripples, if not destroys, the purpose of the work. This persistent dulness, and incapacity for management and design, shows a defect of character which is a heavy detriment to the whole community. The pleasures of the public show the same low type as their business. The illustrated papers that are read, apart from serious news, are a revelation of the vacuity of the public mind, as the advertisements are a testimony to its imbecility. The absence of any thoughts or information that can enlarge the mind, or give it fresh insight or understanding, and the fatuity of the illustrations, show the helpless little round of common ideas of the well-to-do classes: while the dishing up of legal filth for the lower classes, and the morbid love of trivial accidents and catastrophes, shows terribly the mere animalism which fills their horizon. The one subject on which most print is spent is that which is absolutely futile, sport and games. Whether one group of men, selected by mere accident, is a minute trifle more active than another accidental group, is a matter of such utter insignificance that it would seem impossible to suppose that anyone would turn the head to see the result decided. Yet such questions absorb most of the interests and spare thoughts and reading of a great part—perhaps the greater part—of the population, just as the races of the circus swamped all other interests of the decadent Roman. The results which they crave for cannot possibly mean anything to the present or to the future, as the selection is merely due to accidental causes. Even a lower depth is the relative excellence of two horses which are completely unknown to the persons who speculate on them. The utter waste of thought and print in such interests is a form of insanity which is worse than a drug habit, as it implies a hopeless atrophy of the mind to interests which would help it or develop it.