appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow
struck on the cold iron. Take your vase of Venice glass out of the
furnace, and strew chaff over it in its transparent heat, and recover
_that_ to its clearness and rubied glory when the north wind has blown
upon it; but do not think to strew chaff over the child fresh from God's
presence, and to bring the heavenly colors back to him--at least in this
world.

FOOTNOTES

[120] Compare Stones of Venice, vol. iii. chap. iii. Sec. 74.

[121] Taken all in all, the works of Cruikshank have the most
sterling value of any belonging to this class, produced in England.

[122] "The notice in Blackwood is still more scurrilous; the
circumstance of Keats having been brought up a surgeon is the staple
of the jokes of the piece. He is told 'it is a better and wiser
thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet.'"--_Milnes'
Life of Keats_, vol. i. p. 200, and compare pp. 193, 194. It may
perhaps be said that I attach too much importance to the evil of
base criticism; but those who think so have never rightly understood
its scope, nor the reach of that stern saying of Johnson's (Idler,
No. 3, April 29, 1758): "Little does he (who assumes the character
of a critic) think how many harmless men he involves in his own
guilt, by teaching them to be noxious without malignity, and to
repeat objections which they do not understand." And truly, not in
this kind only, but in all things whatsoever, there is not, to my
mind, a more woful or wonderful matter of thought than the power of
a fool. In the world's affairs there is no design so great or good
but it will take twenty wise men to help it forward a few inches,
and a single fool can stop it; there is no evil so great or so
terrible but that, after a multitude of counsellors have taken means
to avert it, a single fool will bring it down. Pestilence, famine,
and the sword, are given into the fool's hand as the arrows into the
hand of the giant: and if he were fairly set forth in the right
motley, the web of it should be sackcloth and sable; the bells on
his cap, passing balls; his badge, a bear robbed of her whelps; and
his bauble, a sexton's spade.

[123] By the way, this doubt of the possibility of an emperor's
death till he _proves_ it, is a curious fact in the history of
Scottish metaphysics in the nineteen