e poor
beggar a feeble dwarf, the dust of the one would be appreciably more
than that of the other, And what means this Daniel come to judgment by
teaching that a hero's name is light and useless? We had supposed it was
agreed among all civilized people that a nation's heroic memories are
her most priceless possessions. We ask the question simply as a
rhetorical one. We are perfectly aware that the author means nothing. He
seldom does mean anything. And if he did, he is the last person to whom
we should apply for any exact definition of his meaning. He uses words
with very little comprehension of their ordinary meaning; of the
delicacy or the force of language he has no sort of conception. He
grasps at the skirts of any notion that flutters through his disorderly
mind, fastens to it the word that comes first to hand, and sets it
fluttering again. Juxtaposition is his all-sufficient substitute for
connection, and "a moment's time, a point of space," between two
statements is fatal to his arguments. "We all differ. _Therefore_," is
his extraordinary inference, "every individual should live, not for
himself, but to be valuable to others; _for_," and here we turn another
of his inexplicable corners, "it would be sheer midsummer madness to
preach up that all are equally valuable." Consequently we embark on his
sentences, paragraphs, and chapters in entire ignorance of the point
where they will land us. He takes Mr. Helps to task for bowing the knee
to the Moloch of success in writing Mr. Stephenson's life, accuses Mr.
Stephenson of borrowing and purloining ideas, yet himself constantly
holds him up to admiration as a hero. The putting down of the
Slaveholders' Rebellion is to him a mere "blundering into slaughter";
but the Crimean War "showed that heroism is not yet extinct in high
life"; and in the Indian Mutinies, we, the English, "were attacked,
undermined, betrayed," and that rebellion was quelled with "courage,
skill in arms, anything you will, or all things combined, and God's
blessing chief of all, which enabled us to preserve a mighty empire." Of
these "high people" he advises us to "adopt the polish, suavity, and
politeness, one towards another, which, with few exceptions, they all
have," only two pages after he has illustrated "vulgar curiosity in high
life" by telling us how, "at an entertainment given by the Prince and
Princess of Wales, to which, of course, only the very cream of the cream
of society was admitted