an himself. I have observed that certain
sectaries and polemical writers have no higher compliment to pay their
most shining lights than to say that "Such a one was a considerable man
in his day." Some new elucidation of a text sets aside the authority of
the old interpretation, and a "great scholar's memory outlives him half
a century," at the utmost. A rich man is not a great man, except to his
dependents and his steward. A lord is a great man in the idea we have of
his ancestry, and probably of himself, if we know nothing of him but his
title. I have heard a story of two bishops, one of whom said (speaking
of St. Peter's at Rome) that when he first entered it, he was rather
awe-struck, but that as he walked up it, his mind seemed to swell and
dilate with it, and at last to fill the whole building: the other said
that as he saw more of it, he appeared to himself to grow less and less
every step he took, and in the end to dwindle into nothing. This was
in some respects a striking picture of a great and little mind; for
greatness sympathises with greatness, and littleness shrinks into
itself. The one might have become a Wolsey; the other was only fit to
become a Mendicant Friar--or there might have been court reasons for
making him a bishop. The French have to me a character of littleness in
all about them; but they have produced three great men that belong to
every country, Moliere, Rabelais, and Montaigne.

To return from this digression, and conclude Essay. A singular instance
of manual dexterity was shown in the person of the late John Cavanaugh,
whom I have several times seen. His death was celebrated at the time
in an article in the _Examiner_ newspaper (Feb. 7, 1819), written
apparently between jest and earnest; but as it is _pat_ to our purpose,
and falls in with my own way of considering such subjects, I shall here
take leave to quote it:--

'Died at his house in Burbage Street, St. Giles's, John Cavanagh, the
famous hand fives-player. When a person dies who does any one thing
better than any one else in the world, which so many others are trying
to do well, it leaves a gap in society. It is not likely that any one
will now see the game of fives played in its perfection for many years
to come--for Cavanagh is dead, and has not left his peer behind him.
It may be said that there are things of more importance than striking a
ball against a wall--there are things, indeed, that make more noise and
do as little goo