after long ages it is
re-discovered, and valued as belonging to a neo-rubbish age--containing,
perhaps, traces of a still older paleo-rubbish civilisation. So when
people are old, indigent, and in all respects incapable, we hold them in
greater and greater contempt as their poverty and impotence increase,
till they reach the pitch when they are actually at the point to die,
whereon they become sublime. Then we place every resource our hospitals
can command at their disposal, and show no stint in our consideration for
them.

It is the same with all our interests. We care most about extremes of
importance and of unimportance; but extremes of importance are tainted
with fear, and a very imperfect fear casteth out love. Extremes of
unimportance cannot hurt us, therefore we are well disposed towards them;
the means may come to do so, therefore we do not love them. Hence we
pick a fly out of a milk-jug and watch with pleasure over its recovery,
for we are confident that under no conceivable circumstances will it want
to borrow money from us; but we feel less sure about a mouse, so we show
it no quarter. The compilers of our almanacs well know this tendency of
our natures, so they tell us, not when Noah went into the ark, nor when
the temple of Jerusalem was dedicated, but that Lindley Murray,
grammarian, died January 16, 1826. This is not because they could not
find so many as three hundred and sixty-five events of considerable
interest since the creation of the world, but because they well know we
would rather hear of something less interesting. We care most about what
concerns us either very closely, or so little that practically we have
nothing whatever to do with it.

I once asked a young Italian, who professed to have a considerable
knowledge of English literature, which of all our poems pleased him best.
He replied without a moment's hesitation:--

"Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed to see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon."

He said this was better than anything in Italian. They had Dante and
Tasso, and ever so many more great poets, but they had nothing comparable
to "Hey diddle diddle," nor had he been able to conceive how any one
could have written it. Did I know the author's name, and had we given
him a statue? On this I told him of the young lady of Harrow who would
go to church in a barrow, and plied hi