small,
ill-chosen Library; and then turned loose into it eleven-hundred
Christian striplings, to tumble about as they listed, from three to
seven years: certain persons, under the title of Professors, being
stationed at the gates, to declare aloud that it was a University, and
exact considerable admission-fees,--you had, not indeed in mechanical
structure, yet in spirit and result, some imperfect resemblance of our
High Seminary. I say, imperfect; for if our mechanical structure was
quite other, so neither was our result altogether the same: unhappily,
we were not in Crim Tartary, but in a corrupt European city, full of
smoke and sin; moreover, in the middle of a Public, which, without far
costlier apparatus than that of the Square Enclosure, and Declaration
aloud, you could not be sure of gulling.

'Gullible, however, by fit apparatus, all Publics are; and gulled,
with the most surprising profit. Towards anything like a _Statistics
of Imposture_, indeed, little as yet has been done: with a strange
indifference, our Economists, nigh buried under Tables for minor
Branches of Industry, have altogether overlooked the grand
all-overtopping Hypocrisy Branch; as if our whole arts of Puffery, of
Quackery, Priestcraft, Kingcraft, and the innumerable other crafts and
mysteries of that genus, had not ranked in Productive Industry at all!
Can any one, for example, so much as say, What moneys, in Literature
and Shoeblacking, are realised by actual Instruction and actual jet
Polish; what by fictitious-persuasive Proclamation of such; specifying,
in distinct items, the distributions, circulations, disbursements,
incomings of said moneys, with the smallest approach to accuracy? But
to ask, How far, in all the several infinitely-complected departments
of social business, in government, education, in manual, commercial,
intellectual fabrication of every sort, man's Want is supplied by true
Ware; how far by the mere Appearance of true Ware:--in other words, To
what extent, by what methods, with what effects, in various times and
countries, Deception takes the place of wages of Performance: here
truly is an Inquiry big with results for the future time, but to which
hitherto only the vaguest answer can be given. If for the present, in
our Europe, we estimate the ratio of Ware to Appearance of Ware so
high even as at One to a Hundred (which, considering the Wages of a
Pope, Russian Autocrat, or English Game-Preserver, is probably not far