When Corporal Trim in one of his many attempts to begin the immortal story of the King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles, called that King unfortunate, and Uncle Toby compassionately asked “was he unfortunate then?” the Corporal replied, the King of Bohemia, an' please your honour was _unfortunate_, as thus,—that taking great pleasure and delight in navigation and all sort of sea affairs, and there happening throughout the whole Kingdom of Bohemia, to be no sea-port town whatever,—“How the Deuce should there, Trim? cried my Uncle Toby; for Bohemia being totally inland, it could have happened no otherwise.”—“It might said Trim, if it had pleased God.”—“I believe not, replied my Uncle Toby, after some pause—for being inland as I said, and having Silesia and Moravia to the East; Lusatia and Upper Saxony to the North; Franconia to the West, and Bavaria to the South, Bohemia could not have been propelled to the sea, without ceasing to be Bohemia,—nor could the sea, on the other hand, have come up to Bohemia, without overflowing a great part of Germany, and destroying millions of unfortunate inhabitants who could make no defence against it,—which would bespeak, added my Uncle Toby, mildly, such a want of compassion in Him who is the Father of it,—that, I think, Trim—the thing could have happened no way.” Were I to say of a Homo on any establishment whatsoever, political, commercial or literary, public or private, legal or ecclesiastical, orthodox or heterodox, military or naval,—I include them all that no individual in any may fancy the observation was intended for himself and so take it in snuff, (a phrase of which I would explain the origin if I could,)—and moreover that no one may apply to himself the illustration which is about to be made, I use the most generic term that could be applied,—Were I to say of any Homo, (and how many are there of whom it might be said!) that he might have been whelped or foaled, instead of having been born, no judicious reader would understand me as predicating this to be possible, but as denoting an opinion that such an animal might as well have been a quadruped as what he is; and that for any use which he makes of his intellect, it might have been better for society if he had gone on four legs and carried panniers. “There stands the Honourable Baronet, hesitating between two bundles of opinions”—said a certain noble Lord of a certain County Member in the course of an animated debate in the House of Commons on a subject now long since forgotten. I will not say of any Homo on any establishment that his fault is that of hesitating too long or hazarding too little; but I will say of any such hypothetical Homo as might better have been foaled, that I wish his panniers had supplied him with better bundles to choose of.