The others of the staff (the names of some of whom we could give) were not to be compared to these leaders--not even to the "Moudiewart," who, however stupid in respect to the science, was really sufficiently up to "the thing" to entitle him to rank as a successful if not respectable merchant. They were so utterly insensate, that they could not even commit the great mistake of supposing that their occupation degraded them, for the good reason that they were unconscious of degradation. Not that they were unhappy in consequence of not liking the work, for they were even fond of it as a means of getting them drink and tobacco, without the hope of which they might have been dull or sad, but not unhappy, a term which implies something like intelligence, if not sentiment. Fitted only for the humblest parts of the calling--the carrying, the watching, the calling out when intruders loomed in the distance--they had no envy towards the higher orders, and being thus free from all care, they could sing or whistle beneath the burden of a poet without thinking that they desecrated the profession of the Muses. We might thus liken them to those interlusive gentry who play the punning parts of a terribly deep tragedy, and who, not knowing where the pathos lies, as when Hamlet discourses on the skull, are contented with the duty of shovelling out either soil or song. If we were inclined to moralise a little on the condition of such men as these, if men they can be called, we would hesitate to subscribe to the old Johnsonian notion that happiness has any relation to the number of ideas that pass through the mind, if we would not go to the other extreme, that for aught we know, there may be as much of that kind of thing between the shells of an oyster as between the ribs of a human being--at least the question must remain unsettled until we come again in the round of changes to the doctrine of transmigration of souls. The world is full of the examples of the meeting of extremes; and if you want one more, just take that afforded by the fact that these men we have been describing could carry on their shoulders in a canvas bag a Rothschild or a Byron, and never think that they were to any degree honoured by the burden. All one to them--the beautiful young creature who died of a scorned affection, the shrivelled miser who expired in a clutch of his gold, or the old gaberlunzie whose puckered lungs could no longer inflate themselves or the bagpipes which once received so joyfully the superabundant wind. But seriously, although these things have been, are we entitled to go with the fatalist, who says that what is, is as it ought to be? Though the wily fox contrived to get his neighbours to cut off their tails to make them like himself in his misfortune of being excaudated, is that any reason why nature should repeal her law and produce therefore tailless foxes? We hope not. And so also, because science run mad decreed that she should be