s a bad critic) will also have more
discernment; and he will perceive that it is not for the mere facts that
the case is reported, but because these facts move through a wilderness of
natural thoughts or feelings; some in the child who suffers; some in the
man who reports; but all so far interesting as they relate to solemn
objects. Meantime, the objection of the sullen critic reminds me of a
scene sometimes beheld at the English lakes. Figure to yourself an
energetic tourist, who protests every where that he comes only to see the
lakes. He has no business whatever; he is not searching for any recreant
indorser of a bill, but simply in search of the picturesque. Yet this man
adjures every landlord, "by the virtue of his oath," to tell him, and as
he hopes for peace in this world to tell him truly, which is the _nearest_
road to Keswick. Next, he applies to the postilions--the Westmoreland
postilions always fly down hills at full stretch without locking--but
nevertheless, in the full career of their fiery race, our picturesque man
lets down the glasses, pulls up four horses and two postilions, at the
risk of six necks and twenty legs, adjuring them to reveal whether they
are taking the _shortest_ road. Finally, he descries my unworthy self upon
the road; and, instantly stopping his flying equipage, he demands of me
(as one whom he believes to be a scholar and a man of honour) whether
there is not, in the possibility of things, a _shorter_ cut to Keswick.
Now, the answer which rises to the lips of landlord, two postilions, and
myself, is this--"Most excellent stranger, as you come to the lakes simply
to see their loveliness, might it not be as well to ask after the most
beautiful road, rather than the shortest? Because, if abstract shortness,
if [Greek: to] brevity is your object, then the shortest of all possible
tours would seem, with submission--never to have left London." On the same
principle, I tell my critic that the whole course of this narrative
resembles, and was meant to resemble, a _caduceus_ wreathed about with
meandering ornaments, or the shaft of a tree's stem hung round and
surmounted with some vagrant parasitical plant. The mere medical subject
of the opium answers to the dry withered pole, which shoots all the rings
of the flowering plants, and seems to do so by some dexterity of its own;
whereas, in fact, the plant and its tendrils have curled round the sullen
cylinder by mere luxuriance of _theirs_. Just