Let us pause now to ask whether this poor little creature was not to be pitied? Did he not seem to have been plucked out of his own sphere of safe and comparatively happy obscurity, only in order to become every one's game--an object of everybody's cupidity and cruelty? May he not be compared to the flying-fish, who, springing out of the water to avoid his deadly pursuer there, is instantly pounced upon by his ravenous assailants in the air? In the lower, and in the upper regions of society, was not this the condition of poor Tittlebat Titmouse? Was not his long-coveted advancement merely a transition from scenes of vulgar to refined rapacity? Had he, ever since "_luck_ had happened to him," had one single _friend_ to whisper in his ear one word of pity and of disinterested counsel? In the splendid regions which he had entered, who regarded him otherwise than as a legitimate object for plunder or ridicule, the latter disguised by the _designing_ only? Was not even his dignified and exemplary old kinsman, the Earl of Dreddlington, Right Honorable as he was, influenced solely by considerations of paltry self-interest? Had he not his own ridiculous and mercenary designs to accomplish, amid all the attentions he vouchsafed to bestow upon Titmouse? 'Twas, I think, old Hobbes of Malmesbury who held, that the natural state of mankind was one of war with each other. One really sees a good deal in life, especially after tracing the progress of society, that would seem to give some color to so strange a notion. 'Twas, of course, at first a matter of downright fisticuffs--of physical strife, occasioned, in a great measure, by our natural tendencies, according to him of Malmesbury; and aggravated by the desire which everybody had, to take away from everybody else what he had. In process of time we have, in a measure, dropped the physical part of the business; and instead of punching, scratching, kicking, biting, and knocking down one another, still true to the original principles of our nature, we are all endeavoring to circumvent one another: everybody is trying to take everybody in; the moment that one of us has got together a thing or two, he is pounced upon by his neighbor, who in his turn falls a prey to another, and so on in endless succession. We cannot effectually help ourselves, though we are splitting our heads to discover devices by way of laws, to restrain this propensity of our nature: it will not do; we are all overreaching, cheating, swindling, robbing one another, and, if necessary, are ready to ruin, maim, and murder one another in the prosecution of our designs. So is it with nations as with individuals, and minor collections of individuals. Truly, truly, we are a precious set, whether the sage of Malmesbury be right or wrong in his speculations!----