When I was a boy at school, I used, like other boys, to employ very unprofitably some of my leisure hours in keeping silk-worms. In a neighbouring garden there was a large mulberry-tree, and for a certain sum--I forget what--I, as well as other boys, was permitted to go in and gather as many leaves as I thought necessary as food for the emblem of the English literary man: I mean the silk-worm who spins golden threads for the benefit of others, and whose tomb is valued after he himself is gone. But it is not with the silk-worm I have to do now. The leaves which I gathered as a boy are my illustration. I remember very well that I used to place them one upon the other in a pile, and try to gather them as nearly of the same size and shape as I could; but, do what I would, I never was able to find two that were exactly alike. A point would stick out here, and a point would stick out there. Some would be a little longer, some would be a little shorter; and I used to marvel, even in those young days, that in such a simple thing as a leaf there should be such infinite variety. I have marvelled more at human nature since, in which, with all the training and forcing and moulding of society, with similar education, similar laws--I might almost say similar accidents--we never find two characters exactly alike, any more than two leaves perfectly the same on a tree. Were this a contemplative age, I would venture to meditate upon the subject much farther, for it is a fine one and a strange one. But this is not a contemplative age. It is an age of action, wherein no thought that does not apply to the mere business of the day is worth a farthing. I do not mean to abuse it. It is quite as good as any other age that ever was, or perhaps ever will be; but still this is its character. It has lost something, if it has gained something. Let those strike the balance who keep such accounts accurately. I am of the age, so I must onward; and I only put down these meditations because there are some men of a contemplative turn, such as I once was myself; and because even men of the most earnest activity have their contemplative moments, when that which is suggestive interests more than that which is objective.