nywhere. The wheel, as a mode of movement,
is a purely human thing. On the ancient escutcheon of Adam (which,
like much of the rest of his costume, has not yet been discovered) the
heraldic emblem was a wheel--passant. As a mode of progress, I say, it
is unique. Many modern philosophers, like my friend before mentioned,
are ready to find links between man and beast, and to show that man has
been in all things the blind slave of his mother earth. Some, of a
very different kind, are even eager to show it; especially if it can be
twisted to the discredit of religion. But even the most eager scientists
have often admitted in my hearing that they would be surprised if some
kind of cow approached them moving solemnly on four wheels. Wings, fins,
flappers, claws, hoofs, webs, trotters, with all these the fantastic
families of the earth come against us and close around us, fluttering
and flapping and rustling and galloping and lumbering and thundering;
but there is no sound of wheels.

I remember dimly, if, indeed, I remember aright, that in some of those
dark prophetic pages of Scripture, that seem of cloudy purple and dusky
gold, there is a passage in which the seer beholds a violent dream
of wheels. Perhaps this was indeed the symbolic declaration of the
spiritual supremacy of man. Whatever the birds may do above or the
fishes beneath his ship, man is the only thing to steer; the only thing
to be conceived as steering. He may make the birds his friends, if he
can. He may make the fishes his gods, if he chooses. But most certainly
he will not believe a bird at the masthead; and it is hardly likely
that he will even permit a fish at the helm. He is, as Swinburne says,
helmsman and chief: he is literally the Man at the Wheel.

The wheel is an animal that is always standing on its head; only "it
does it so rapidly that no philosopher has ever found out which is its
head." Or if the phrase be felt as more exact, it is an animal that is
always turning head over heels and progressing by this principle. Some
fish, I think, turn head over heels (supposing them, for the sake of
argument, to have heels); I have a dog who nearly did it; and I did
it once myself when I was very small. It was an accident, and, as
delightful novelist, Mr. De Morgan, would say, it never can happen
again. Since then no one has accused me of being upside down except
mentally: and I rather think that there is something to be said for
that; especially as typif