556 
SHORT STUDIES. 
us, out of all proportion to what we were found to 
have deserved. I was reminded of a large compart- 
ment in the Paris Exhibition where an active gentle- 
man, wishing to show the state of English literature, 
had collected copies of every book, review, pamphlet, 
or newspaper which had been published in a single 
year, The bulk was overwhelming, but the figures 
were only decimal points, and the worth of the whole 
was a fraction above zero. A few of us were turned 
back summarily among the thieves and the fine 
gentlemen and ladies--speculators who had done 
nothing but handle money which had clung to their 
fingers in passing through them, divines who had 
preached a morality which they did not practise, and 
fluent orators who had made speeches which they 
knew to be nonsense, philosophers who had spun out 
of moonshine systems of the universe, distinguished 
pleaders who had defeated justice while they estab- 
lished points of law, writers of books upon subjects 
of which they knew enough to mislead their readers, 
purveyors of luxuries which had added nothing to 
human health or strength, physicians and apothecaries 
who had pretended to knowledge which they knew 
that they did not possess,—these all, as the contents 
of their boxes bore witness against them, were thrust 
back into the rejected herd,