chosen
the strife, and set every man's hand against his neighbor, her
house is not yet so full of good eating as she expected, even
though she gets half of her victuals from America.)

2. Verse 3.--The fining pot is for silver, the furnace for gold,
but the Lord tries the heart.

(Notice the increasing strength of trial for the more precious
thing: only the melting-pot for the silver--the fierce furnace for
the gold--but the Fire of the Lord for the heart.)

3. Verse 4.--A wicked doer giveth heed to false lips.

(That means, for _you_, that, intending to live by usury and
swindling, you read Mr. Adam Smith and Mr. Stuart Mill, and other
such political economists.)

4. Verse 5.--Whoso mocketh the poor, reproacheth his Maker.

(Mocketh,--by saying that his poverty is his fault, no less than
his misfortune,--England's favorite theory now-a-days.)

5. Verse 12.--Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man, rather
than a fool in his folly.

(Carlyle is often now accused of false scorn in his calling the
passengers over London Bridge, "mostly fools,"--on the ground that
men are only to be justly held foolish if their intellect is under,
as only wise when it is above, the average. But the reader will
please observe that the essential function of modern education is
to develop what capacity of mistake a man has. Leave him at his
forge and plow,--and those tutors teach him his true value, indulge
him in no error, and provoke him to no vice. But take him up to
London,--give him her papers to read, and her talk to hear,--and it
is fifty to one you send him presently on a fool's errand over
London Bridge.)

6. Now listen, for this verse is the question you have mainly to
ask yourselves about your beautiful all-over-England system of
competitive examination:--

Verse 16. Wherefore is there a price in the hand of a fool to get
wisdom, seeing he hath no heart to it?

(You know perfectly well it isn't the wisdom you want, but the
"station in life,"--and the money!)

7. Lastly, Verse 7.--Wisdom is before him that hath understanding,
but the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth.

"And in the beginnings of it"! Solomon would have written, had he
lived in our day; but we will be content with the ends at present.
No scientific people, as I told you at first, have taken any notice
of the more or less temporary phenomena of which I have to-night
given you register. But, from the constant arrangements of the
universe,