time, and
on account of the informality which had thus arisen, he could not set
out home till the return of the post, which was four days longer. His
spirit could not brook the delay. He had wound himself up to the last
pitch of expectation; he had, as it were, calculated his patience to
hold out to a certain point, and then to throw down his load for ever,
and he could not find resolution to resume it for a few hours
beyond this. He put an end to the intolerable conflict of hope and
disappointment in a fit of excruciating anguish. Woes that we have time
to foresee and leisure to contemplate break their force by being spread
over a larger surface and borne at intervals; but those that come
upon us suddenly, for however short a time, seem to insult us by their
unnecessary and uncalled-for intrusion; and the very prospect of relief,
when held out and then withdrawn from us, to however small a distance,
only frets impatience into agony by tantalising our hopes and wishes;
and to rend asunder the thin partition that separates us from our
favourite object, we are ready to burst even the fetters of life itself!

I am not aware that any one has demonstrated how it is that a stronger
capacity is required for the conduct of great affairs than of small
ones. The organs of the mind, like the pupil of the eye, may be
contracted or dilated to view a broader or a narrower surface, and yet
find sufficient variety to occupy its attention in each. The material
universe is infinitely divisible, and so is the texture of human
affairs. We take things in the gross or in the detail, according to the
occasion. I think I could as soon get up the budget of Ways and Means
for the current year, as be sure of making both ends meet, and paying my
rent at quarter-day in a paltry huckster's shop. Great objects move
on by their own weight and impulse; great power turns aside
petty obstacles; and he who wields it is often but the puppet of
circumstances, like the fly on the wheel that said, 'What a dust we
raise!' It is easier to ruin a kingdom and aggrandise one's own pride
and prejudices than to set up a greengrocer's stall. An idiot or a
madman may do this at any time, whose word is law, and whose nod is
fate. Nay, he whose look is obedience, and who understands the silent
wishes of the great, may easily trample on the necks and tread out the
liberties of a mighty nation, deriding their strength, and hating it the
more from a consciousness of his o