was the 'sand magazine;' 'Fraser's' nearer
approach to possibility of life was the 'mud magazine;' a piece of
road near by that marked some failed enterprise was 'the grave of the
last sixpence.' When too much praise of any genius annoyed him, he
professed hugely to admire the talent shewn by his pig. He had spent
much time and contrivance in confining the poor beast to one enclosure
in his pen, but pig, by great strokes of judgment, had found out
how to let a board down, and had foiled him. For all that, he still
thought man the most plastic little fellow in the planet, and he liked
Nero's death, 'Qualis artifex pereo!' better than most history. He
worships a man that will manifest any truth to him. At one time he had
inquired and read a good deal about America. Landor's principle was
mere rebellion, and that he feared was the American principle. The
best thing he knew of that country was, that in it a man can have meat
for his labour. He had read in Stewart's book, that when he inquired
in a New York hotel for the Boots, he had been shown across the
street, and had found Mungo in his own house dining on roast turkey.

"We talked of books. Plato he does not read, and he disparaged
Socrates; and, when pressed, persisted in making Mirabeau a hero.
Gibbon he called the splendid bridge from the old world to the new.
His own reading had been multifarious. Tristram Shandy was one of his
first books after Robinson Crusoe, and Robertson's America an early
favourite. Rousseau's Confessions had discovered to him that he was
not a dunce; and it was now ten years since he had learned German, by
the advice of a man who told him he would find in that language what
he wanted.

"He took despairing or satirical views of literature at this
moment; recounted the incredible sums paid in one year by the great
booksellers for puffing. Hence it comes that no newspaper is trusted
now, no books are bought, and the booksellers are on the eve of
bankruptcy.

"He still returned to English pauperism, the crowded country, the
selfish abdication by public men of all that public persons should
perform. 'Government should direct poor men what to do. Poor Irish
folk come wandering over these moors. My dame makes it a rule to give
to every son of Adam bread to eat, and supplies his wants to the next
house. But here are thousands of acres which might give them all meat,
and nobody to bid these poor Irish go to the moor and till it. They
burned the s