their minds off worse discomforts. It is a kind of grievance, too, that they like to have. DUNSFORD. Really, Ellesmere, that is a most unfeeling speech. MILVERTON. At any rate, it is right for us to honor and serve a great man. It is our nature to do We may put aside the so, if we are worth any thing. question whether our honor will do him more good than our neglect. That is a question for him to look to. The world has not yet so largely honored deserving men in their own time, that we can exactly pronounce what effect it would have upon them. ELLESMERE. Come, Rollo, let us leave the men of sentiment. Oh, you will not go, as your master does not move. Look how he wags his tail, and almost says "I should dearly like to have a hunt after the water rat we saw in the pond the other day, but master is talking philosophy, and requires an intelligent audience." These dogs are dear creatures it must be owned. Come, Milverton, let us have a walk. CHAPTER X. AFTER the reading in the last chapter my friends walked homewards with me as far as Durley Wood, which is about half way between Worth Ashton and my house. As we rested there, we bethought ourselves that it would be a pleasant spot for us to come to sometimes and read our essays. So we agreed to name a day for meeting there. The day was favorable, we met as we had appointed, and, finding some beech logs lying very opportunely, took possession of them for our council. We seated Ellesmere on one that we called the woolsack, but which he said he felt himself unworthy to occupy in the presence of King Log, pointing to mine. These nice points of etiquette being at last settled, Milverton drew out his papers and was about to begin reading, when Ellesmere thus interrupted him. ELLESMERE. You were not in earnest, Milverton, about giving us an essay on population; because if so, I think I shall leave this place to you and Dunsford and the ants? MILVERTON. I certainly have been meditating something of the sort; but have not been able to make much of it. ELLESMERE. If I had been living in those days when it first beamed upon mankind, that the earth was round, I am sure I should have said, "We know now the bounds of the earth: there are no interminable plains joined to the regions of the sun, allowing of indefinite sketchy outlines at the edges of maps. That little creature man will immediately begin to think that his world is too small for him." MILVERTON. There has probably been as muck folly uttered by political economy as against it, which is saying something. The danger as regards theories of political economy is the obvious one, of their abstract conclusions being applied to concrete things. ELLESMERE. As if we were to expect mathematical lines to bear weights. MILVERTON. Something like that. With a good system of logic pervading the public mind, this danger would of course be avoided; but such a state of mind is not likely to occur in any public that we or our grandchildren are likely to have to deal with. As it is, an ordinary man hears some conclusion of political economy, showing some particular tendency of things, which in real life meets with many counteractions of all kinds: but he, perhaps, adopts the conclusion without the least abatement, and would work it into life, as if all went on there like a rule-of-three sum. ELLESMERE. After all, this error arises from the man's not having enough political economy. It is not that a theory is good on paper, but unsound in real life. It is only that in real life you cannot get at the simple state of things to which the theory would rightly apply. You want many other theories, and the just composition of them all, to be able to work the whole problem. That being done, (which, however, scarcely can be done,) the result on paper might be read off as applicable at once to life. But now touching the essay; since we are not to have population, what is it to be? MILVERTON. Public Improvements. ELLESMERE. Nearly as bad; but as this is a favorite subject of yours, I suppose it will not be polite to go away. MILVERTON. No, you must listen. PUBLIC IMPROVEMENTS. What are possessions? To an individual, the stores of his own heart and mind preeminently. His truth and valor are amongst the first. His contentedness, or his resignation, may be put next. Then his sense of beauty, surely a possession of great moment to him. Then all those mixed possessions which result from the social affections-great possessions, unspeakable delights, much greater than the gift last mentioned in the former class, but held on more uncertain tenure. Lastly, what are generally called possessions. However often we have heard of the vanity, uncertainty and vexation that beset these last, we must not let this repetition deaden our minds to the fact. Now, national possessions must be estimated by the same gradation that we have applied to individual possessions. If we consider national luxury, we shall see how small a part it may add to national happiness. Men of deserved renown, and peerless women lived upon what we should now call the coarsest fare, and paced the rushes in their rooms with as high, or as contented thoughts, as their better fed and better clothed descendants can boast of. Man is limited in this direction; I mean in the things that concern his personal gratification; but when you come to the higher enjoyments, the expansive power both in him and them is greater. As Keats says, "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing." What then are a nation's possessions? The great words that have been said in it; the great deeds that have been done in it; the great buildings, and the great works of art, that have been made in it. A man says a noble saying: it is a possession, first to his own race, then to man |