The Abbé Girard, in his accurate work, “Synonymes François,” makes a _plausible_ distinction between _un âne_ et _un ignorant_; he says, “On est âne par disposition: on est ignorant par défaut d’instruction.” An ignorant person may certainly, even in the very circumstances which betray his ignorance, evince considerable ability. For instance, the native Indian, who for the first time saw a bottle of porter uncorked, and who expressed great astonishment at the quantity of froth which he saw burst from the bottle, and much curiosity to know whether it could all be put in again, showed even in his ignorance a degree of capacity, which in different situations might have saved his life, or have made his fortune. In the situation of the poor fisher-man, and the great giant of smoke, who issued from the small vessel, well known to all versed in the Arabian Tales, such acuteness would have saved his life; and a similar spirit of inquiry, applied to chemistry, might, in modern times, have made his fortune. Even where no positive abilities are displayed at the time by those who manifest ignorance, we should not (_except the culprits be natives of Ireland_) hastily give them up. Ignorance of the most common objects is not only incident to certain situations, but absolutely unavoidable; and the individuals placed in those situations are no more blameable than they would be for becoming blind in the snows of Lapland, or for having goitres amongst the Cretins of Le Vallais. Would you blame the ignorant nuns who, insensible of the danger of an eruption of Mount Vesuvius,[32] warmed themselves at the burning lava which flowed up to the windows of their cells? or would you think the French canoness an idiot who, at the age of fifty, was, on account of her health, to go out of her convent, and asked, when she met a cow for the first time, what strange animal that was? or would you think that those poor children deserved to be stigmatized as fools, who, after being confined for a couple of years in an English workhouse, actually at eight years old had forgotten the names of a pig and a calf?[33] their ignorance was surely more deplorable than ridiculous. When the London young lady kept a collection of chicken-bones on her plate at dinner, as a bonne-bouche for her brother’s horse,[34] Dr. Johnson would not suffer her to be called an idiot, but very judiciously defended her, by maintaining, that her action merely demonstrated her ignorant of points of natural history, on which a London miss had no immediate opportunity of obtaining information. Had the world always judged upon such subjects with similar candour, the reproachful cant term of _cockney_ would never have been disgracefully naturalized in the English language. This word, as we are informed by a learned philologist, originated from the mistake of a learned citizen’s son, who having been bred up entirely in the metropolis, was so gloriously