ant on all. A friend of mine, a country
parson, on first going to his parish, resolved to farm his glebe for
himself. A neighboring farmer kindly offered the parson to plough one
of his fields. The farmer said that he would send his man John with a
plough and a pair of horses, on a certain day. "If ye're goin' about,"
said the farmer to the clergyman, "John will be unco' weel pleased, if
you speak to him, and say it's a fine day, or the like o' that; but
dinna," said the farmer, with much solemnity, "dinna say onything to him
aboot ploughin' and sawin'; for John," he added, "is a stupid body, but
he has been ploughin' and sawin' all his life, and he'll see in a minute
that _ye_ ken naething aboot ploughin' and sawin'. And then," said the
sagacious old farmer, with extreme earnestness, "if he comes to think
that ye ken naething aboot ploughin' and sawin', he'll think that ye ken
naething aboot onything!" Yes, it is natural to us all to think, that,
if the machine breaks down at that work in which we are competent to
test it, then the machine cannot do any work at all.

If you have a strong current of water, you may turn it into any channel
you please, and make it do any work you please. With equal energy and
success it will flow north or south; it will turn a corn-mill, or a
threshing-machine, or a grindstone. Many people live under a vague
impression that the human mind is like that. They think,--Here is so
much ability, so much energy, which may be turned in any direction, and
made to do any work; and they are surprised to find that the power,
available and great for one kind of work, is worth nothing for another.
A man very clever at one thing is positively weak and stupid at another
thing. A very good judge may be a wretchedly bad joker; and he must go
through his career at this disadvantage, that people, finding him silly
at the thing they are able to estimate, find it hard to believe that he
is not silly at everything. I know, for myself, that it would not be
right that the Premier should request me to look out for a suitable
Chancellor. I am not competent to appreciate the depth of a man's
knowledge of equity; by which I do not mean justice, but chancery law.
But, though quite unable to understand how great a Chancellor Lord Eldon
was, I am quite able to estimate how great a poet he was, also how great
a wit. Here is a poem by that eminent person. Doubtless he regarded it
as a wonder of happy versification, as well