ties of imparting their
remarks, and that modest merit passes in the crowd unknown and unheeded.

One of the greatest men of the society was Sim Scruple, who lives in a
continual equipoise of doubt, and is a constant enemy to confidence and
dogmatism. Sim's favourite topick of conversation is the narrowness of
the human mind, the fallaciousness of our senses, the prevalence of
early prejudice, and the uncertainty of appearances. Sim has many doubts
about the nature of death, and is sometimes inclined to believe that
sensation may survive motion, and that a dead man may feel though he
cannot stir. He has sometimes hinted that man might, perhaps, have been
naturally a quadruped; and thinks it would be very proper, that at the
Foundling Hospital some children should be inclosed in an apartment in
which the nurses should be obliged to walk half upon four and half upon
two legs, that the younglings, being bred without the prejudice of
example, might have no other guide than nature, and might at last come
forth into the world as genius should direct, erect or prone, on two
legs or on four.

The next, in dignity of mien and fluency of talk, was Dick Wormwood,
whose sole delight is to find every thing wrong. Dick never enters a
room but he shows that the door and the chimney are ill-placed. He never
walks into the fields but he finds ground ploughed which is fitter for
pasture. He is always an enemy to the present fashion.

He holds that all the beauty and virtue of women will soon be destroyed
by the use of tea[1]. He triumphs when he talks on the present system of
education, and tells us, with great vehemence, that we are learning
words when we should learn things. He is of opinion that we suck in
errours at the nurse's breast, and thinks it extremely ridiculous that
children should be taught to use the right hand rather than the left.

Bob Sturdy considers it as a point of honour to say again what he has
once said, and wonders how any man, that has been known to alter his
opinion, can look his neighbours in the face. Bob is the most formidable
disputant of the whole company; for, without troubling himself to search
for reasons, he tires his antagonist with repeated affirmations. When
Bob has been attacked for an hour with all the powers of eloquence and
reason, and his position appears to all but himself utterly untenable,
he always closes the debate with his first declaration, introduced by a
stout preface of contemptuou