on credit, or faith, rather than the cash of
irrefragable conviction. The whole universe is carried on on the credit
system, and if the mutual confidence on which it is based were to
collapse, it must itself collapse immediately. Just or unjust, it lives
by faith; it is based on vague and impalpable opinion that by some
inscrutable process passes into will and action, and is made manifest in
matter and in flesh: it is meteoric--suspended in midair; it is the
baseless fabric of a vision so vast, so vivid, and so gorgeous that no
base can seem more broad than such stupendous baselessness, and yet any
man can bring it about his ears by being over-curious; when faith fails a
system based on faith fails also.

Whether the universe is really a paying concern, or whether it is an
inflated bubble that must burst sooner or later, this is another matter.
If people were to demand cash payment in irrefragable certainty for
everything that they have taken hitherto as paper money on the credit of
the bank of public opinion, is there money enough behind it all to stand
so great a drain even on so great a reserve? Probably there is not, but
happily there can be no such panic, for even though the cultured classes
may do so, the uncultured are too dull to have brains enough to commit
such stupendous folly. It takes a long course of academic training to
educate a man up to the standard which he must reach before he can
entertain such questions seriously, and by a merciful dispensation of
Providence, university training is almost as costly as it is
unprofitable. The majority will thus be always unable to afford it, and
will base their opinions on mother wit and current opinion rather than on
demonstration.

So I turned my steps homewards; I saw a good many more things on my way
home, but I was told that I was not to see more this time than I could
get into twelve pages of the _Universal Review_; I must therefore reserve
any remark which I think might perhaps entertain the reader for another
occasion.

THE AUNT, THE NIECES, AND THE DOG {3}

When a thing is old, broken, and useless we throw it on the dust-heap,
but when it is sufficiently old, sufficiently broken, and sufficiently
useless we give money for it, put it into a museum, and read papers over
it which people come long distances to hear. By-and-by, when the
whirligig of time has brought on another revenge, the museum itself
becomes a dust-heap, and remains so till