If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any. After all the maxims and systems of trade and commerce, a stander-by would think the affairs of the world were most ridiculously contrived. There are few countries which, if well cultivated, would not support double the number of their inhabitants, and yet fewer where one-third of the people are not extremely stinted even in the necessaries of life. I send out twenty barrels of corn, which would maintain a family in bread for a year, and I bring back in return a vessel of wine, which half a dozen good follows would drink in less than a month, at the expense of their health and reason. A man would have but few spectators, if he offered to show for threepence how he could thrust a red-hot iron into a barrel of gunpowder, and it should not take fire. FOOTNOTES: {1} Two puppet-show men. {2} The house-keeper. {3} The butler. {4} The footman. {5} The priest his confessor.