The weather, being governed by laws, ought always to be
equable and normal, and yet you have whirlwinds, droughts, thunderstorms.
The share-market, being governed by laws, ought to be always equable and
normal, and yet you have startling transactions, startling panics,
startling disclosures, and a whole sensational romance of commercial
crime and folly. Which of us has lived to be fifty years old, without
having witnessed in private life sensation tragedies, alas! sometimes too
fearful to be told, or at least sensational romances, which we shall take
care not to tell, because we shall not be believed? Let the ditch-water
philosophy say what it will, human life is not a ditch, but a wild and
roaring river, flooding its banks, and eating out new channels with many
a landslip. It is a strange world, and man, a strange animal, guided, it
is true, usually by most commonplace motives; but, for that reason, ready
and glad at times to escape from them and their dulness and baseness; to
give vent, if but for a moment, in wild freedom, to that demoniac
element, which, as Goethe says, underlies his nature and all nature; and
to prefer for an hour, to the normal and respectable ditch-water, a
bottle of champagne or even a carouse on fire-water, let the consequences
be what they may.

How else shall we explain such a phenomenon as those old crusades? Were
they undertaken for any purpose, commercial or other? Certainly not for
lightening an overburdened population. Nay, is not the history of your
own Mormons, and their exodus into the far West, one of the most
startling instances which the world has seen for several centuries, of
the unexpected and incalculable forces which lie hid in man? Believe me,
man's passions, heated to igniting point, rather than his prudence cooled
down to freezing point, are the normal causes of all great human
movement. And a truer law of social science than any that political
economists are wont to lay down, is that old 'Dov' e la Donna' of the
Italian judge, who used to ask, as a preliminary to every case, civil or
criminal, which was brought before him, 'Dov' e la Donna?' 'Where is the
lady?' certain, like a wise old gentleman, that a woman was most probably
at the bottom of the matter.

Strangeness? Romance? Did any of you ever read--if you have not you
should read--Archbishop Whately's _Historic Doubts about the Emperor
Napoleon the First_? Therein the learned and witty Archbishop proved,