r a middle course in all the public events of the day, they remind me
of a case like this--A man of exaggerated notions lays down the
proposition that four and four make ten; another of more discretion and
better arithmetic combats this idea, by maintaining that four and four
make only eight; whereupon, your gentleman of the _juste milieu_, finds
himself obliged to say, 'Messieurs, you are equally in the wrong; the
truth never lies in extremes, and four and four make nine.'"

What is true of conservatism, as a principle, is still more true as to the
movement; for it often happens in morals, as well as in physics, that the
remedy is worse than the disease. The great evil of Europe, in connection
with interests of this nature, arises from facts that have little or no
influence here. There, radical changes have been made, the very base of
the social edifice having been altered, while much of the ancient
architecture remains in the superstructure. Where this is the case, some
errors may be pardoned in the artisans who are for reducing the whole to
the simplicity of a single order. But, among ourselves, the man who can
see no end to anything earthly, ever maintaining that the best always lies
beyond, if he live long enough to succeed, may live long enough to
discover that truth is always on an eminence, and that the downward course
is only too easy to those who rush in so headlong a manner at its goal, as
to suffer the impetus of the ascent to carry them past the apex. A social
fact cannot be carried out to demonstration like a problem in Euclid, the
ramifications being so infinite as to reduce the results to something very
like a conclusion from a multitude of interests.

It is next incumbent to speak of Marble. He passed an entire month at
Clawbonny, during which time he and Neb rigged the Grace and Lucy, seven
different ways, coming back to that in which they found her, as the only
rig in which she would sail; no bad illustration, by the way, of what is
too often the winding up of experiments in overdone political movements.
Moses tried shooting, which he had heard belonged to a country life; and
he had a sort of design to set up as a fourth or fifth class country
gentleman; but his legs were too short to clamber over high rail-fences
with any comfort, and he gave up the amusement in despair. In the course
of a trial of ten days, he brought in three robins, a small squirrel, and
a crow; maintaining that he had also wounded