uth, being the rich grape-juice
expressed from the vineyard of the ages, has an intoxicating quality
when imbibed by any but a powerful intellect, and often, as it were,
impels the quaffer to quarrel in his cups.' Even a saint with one idea
may be a plague to his neighbourhood; and, by being canonised, may
retard, not further, the progress of his church.

Let us own, however, that one-idea'd people are often amusing as well
as mischievous--or rather, when not mischievous. The rapt devotion
they pay to their _idola specus_ oscillates between the sublime and
the ridiculous. We have all seen such people, and alternately admired
and laughed at them. We have all witnessed or read pleasant
illustrations of their doings. With one such illustration we conclude
this discursive fragment. It is related by the witty author of _A
Defence of Ignorance_, who introduces it in the course of an imaginary
dialogue on one-sided university training, in which one of the
speakers (at dessert) says to his companion: 'If you reach after that
pear, without considering what stands against your elbows, you may
empty a decanter over me. He who desires thoroughly to know one
subject, should be possessed of so much intellectual geography as will
enable him to see its true position in the universe of thought.' The
allusion to upsetting a decanter reminds the other interlocutor of a
story, which he proceeds to tell. A gentleman who carved a goose was
inexpert; and thinking only of the stubborn joints that would not be
unhinged, he totally forgot the gravy. Presently, the goose slipped
off the dish, and escaped into his neighbour's lap. Now, to have
thrown a hot goose on a lady's lap would disconcert most people, but
the gentleman in question was _not_ disconcerted. Turning round, with
a bland smile, he said: 'I'll trouble you for that goose.' Here we
have a sublime example of a man with one idea. This gentleman's idea
was the goose; and in the absorbing interest attached to his
undertaking, that he was to carve the goose, not altogether knowing
how, he had shut out extraneous objects. Suddenly the goose was gone,
but his eye followed it, his mind was wrapt up in his struggle with
it; what did he know of that lady? 'I'll trouble you for that goose,'
expressed the perfect abstraction of a mind bent on developing its one
idea.

MR KIRBY THE NATURALIST.

The popular fame of Mr Kirby rests upon the _Introduction to
Entomology_, a work (partly wr