ting, with some abatement. They seldom wait to mature a
proposition, but e'en bring it to market in the green ear. They
delight to impart their defective discoveries as they arise, without
waiting for their full developement. They are no systematizers, and
would but err more by attempting it. Their minds, as I said before,
are suggestive merely. The brain of a true Caledonian (if I am not
mistaken) is constituted upon quite a different plan. His Minerva is
born in panoply. You are never admitted to see his ideas in their
growth--if, indeed, they do grow, and are not rather put together upon
principles of clock-work. You never catch his mind in an undress. He
never hints or suggests any thing, but unlades his stock of ideas
in perfect order and completeness. He brings his total wealth into
company, and gravely unpacks it. His riches are always about him. He
never stoops to catch a glittering something in your presence, to
share it with you, before he quite knows whether it be true touch or
not. You cannot cry _halves_ to any thing that he finds. He does not
find, but bring. You never witness his first apprehension of a thing.
His understanding is always at its meridian--you never see the first
dawn, the early streaks.--He has no falterings of self-suspicion.
Surmises, guesses, misgivings, half-intuitions, semi-consciousnesses,
partial illuminations, dim instincts, embryo conceptions, have no
place in his brain, or vocabulary. The twilight of dubiety never falls
upon him. Is he orthodox--he has no doubts. Is he an infidel--he has
none either. Between the affirmative and the negative there is no
border-land with him. You cannot hover with him upon the confines of
truth, or wander in the maze of a probable argument. He always keeps
the path. You cannot make excursions with him--for he sets you right.
His taste never fluctuates. His morality never abates. He cannot
compromise, or understand middle actions. There can be but a right
and a wrong. His conversation is as a book. His affirmations have the
sanctity of an oath. You must speak upon the square with him. He stops
a metaphor like a suspected person in an enemy's country. "A healthy
book!"--said one of his countrymen to me, who had ventured to give
that appellation to John Buncle,--"did I catch rightly what you said?
I have heard of a man in health, and of a healthy state of body, but I
do not see how that epithet can be properly applied to a book." Above
all, you must be