every principle, the sacrifice of every virtue that happened to come in contact with them; and thus he pursued his daily course, still adding to his store as he lost of his manhood. How very ridiculous it is, thought Peter in his dream, that men will grasp and grasp without stopping to ask a question, and thereby only increase the certainty of being eventually grasped themselves, by most unwelcome clutches, without being allowed the time to answer any. Turning from this wretched specimen of humanity, Peter recognised another who was no less busy, and who seemed as ambitious as Phæton or Icarus, determined to set the world in a blaze, or what appeared more likely to happen, break his own neck in his aspiring flights. He knew of no medium by which to be controlled, and would even have found pleasure in the reputation of being a fool; but, unfortunately, Hobbes spoke truth when he said, that “without learning it is impossible for any man to be either excellently wise or excellently foolish.” Herein he was deficient, and the “number of common fools far exceeding that of wise men,” as a German author observes, they were rendered so general and were so frequently encountered that even this prospect of securing celebrity promised him nothing. Moved by his “wild distemper” he forgot the realities by which he was surrounded, and in his impetuosity to climb up the crooked ladder of distinction, he was hurried to the most extravagant excesses. Erostratus, to obtain renown, fired the temple of Diana, but the Ephesians, to bury his memory in eternal oblivion, prohibited the mention of his name under the penalty of death. This individual, if not yet driven to such extremities to gratify his passion, could nevertheless foresee, in the satiric ridicule certain to follow his mad endeavors, sufficient cause to “go and hang himself out of sheer mortification.” Such, thought Peter, not unfrequently, is the melancholy end of the zealot, when his zeal triumphs over his judgment and dethrones his reason.