shed the poor old spirits
were when they came, and saw how, according to the laws of Mrs.
Bedonebyasyoudid, their descendants had weakened their constitution by
hard living.

Then came Tom to the Island of Polupragmosyne (which some call Rogues'
Harbour; but they are wrong; for that is in the middle of Bramshill
Bushes, and the county police have cleared it out long ago). There every
one knows his neighbour's business better than his own; and a very noisy
place it is, as might be expected, considering that all the inhabitants
are _ex officio_ on the wrong side of the house in the "Parliament of
Man, and the Federation of the World"; and are always making wry mouths,
and crying that the fairies' grapes were sour.

There Tom saw ploughs drawing horses, nails driving hammers, birds'
nests taking boys, books making authors, bulls keeping china-shops,
monkeys shaving cats, dead dogs drilling live lions, blind brigadiers
shelfed as principals of colleges, play-actors not in the least shelfed
as popular preachers; and, in short, every one set to do something which
he had not learnt, because in what he had learnt, or pretended to learn,
he had failed.

There stands the Pantheon of the Great Unsuccessful, from the builders
of the Tower of Babel to those of the Trafalgar Fountains; in which
politicians lecture on the constitutions which ought to have marched,
conspirators on the revolutions which ought to have succeeded,
economists on the schemes which ought to have made every one's fortune,
and projectors on the discoveries which ought to have set the Thames on
fire. There cobblers lecture on orthopedy (whatsoever that may be)
because they cannot sell their shoes; and poets on AEsthetics (whatsoever
that may be) because they cannot sell their poetry. There philosophers
demonstrate that England would be the freest and richest country in the
world, if she would only turn Papist again; penny-a-liners abuse the
_Times_, because they have not wit enough to get on its staff; and young
ladies walk about with lockets of Charles the First's hair (or of
somebody else's, when the Jews' genuine stock is used up), inscribed
with the neat and appropriate legend--which indeed is popular through
all that land, and which, I hope, you will learn to translate in due
time and to perpend likewise:--

"_Victrix causa diis placuit, sed victa puellis._"

When he got into the middle of the town, they all set on him at once,
to show him h