s.

* * * * *

In fact, what we opprobriously call "stupidity," though not an
enlivening quality in common society, is nature's favorite resource for
preserving steadiness of conduct and consistency of opinion; it enforces
concentration: people who learn slowly, learn only what they must. The
best security for people's doing their duty is, that they should not
know anything else to do; the best security for fixedness of opinion is,
that people should be incapable of comprehending what is to be said on
the other side. These valuable truths are no discoveries of mine: they
are familiar enough to people whose business it is to know them. Hear
what a douce and aged attorney says of your peculiarly promising
barrister:--"Sharp? Oh, yes! he's too sharp by half. He is not _safe_,
not a minute, isn't that young man." I extend this, and advisedly
maintain that nations, just as individuals, may be too clever to be
practical and not dull enough to be free....

And what I call a proper stupidity keeps a man from all the defects of
this character: it chains the gifted possessor mainly to his old ideas,
it takes him seven weeks to comprehend an atom of a new one; it keeps
him from being led away by new theories, for there is nothing which
bores him so much; it restrains him within his old pursuits, his
well-known habits, his tried expedients, his verified conclusions, his
traditional beliefs. He is not tempted to levity or impatience, for he
does not see the joke and is thick-skinned to present evils.
Inconsistency puts him out: "What I says is this here, as I was a-saying
yesterday," is his notion of historical eloquence and habitual
discretion. He is very slow indeed to be excited,--his passions, his
feelings, and his affections are dull and tardy strong things, falling
in a certain known direction, fixed on certain known objects, and for
the most part acting in a moderate degree and at a sluggish pace. You
always know where to find his mind. Now, this is exactly what (in
politics at least) you do not know about a Frenchman.

REVIEW WRITING

From 'The First Edinburgh Reviewers'

Review writing exemplifies the casual character of modern literature:
everything about it is temporary and fragmentary. Look at a railway
stall: you see books of every color,--blue, yellow, crimson,
"ring-streaked, speckled, and spotted,"--on every subject, in every
style, of every opinion, with every conceivable diff