ith those cursed trumpets and drums,
blown and dub-a-dubbed by fellows whom I vow to heaven I would not trust
with a five-pound note,--still, if I must march, I must; and so deuce
take the hindmost! But when it comes to individual marchers upon their
own account,--privateers and condottieri of Enlightenment,--who have
filled their pockets with Lucifer matches, and have a sublime contempt
for their neighbour's barns and hay-ricks, I don't see why I should
throw myself into the seventh heaven of admiration and ecstasy.

If those who are eternally rhapsodizing on the celestial blessings that
are to follow Enlightenment, Universal Knowledge, and so forth, would
just take their eyes out of their pockets, and look about them, I
would respectfully inquire if they have never met any very knowing and
enlightened gentleman, whose acquaintance is by no means desirable.
If not, they are monstrous lucky. Every man must judge by his own
experience; and the worst rogues I have ever encountered were amazingly
well-informed clever fellows. From dunderheads and dunces we can protect
ourselves, but from your sharpwitted gentleman, all enlightenment and no
prejudice, we have but to cry, "Heaven defend us!" It is true, that
the rogue (let him be ever so enlightened) usually comes to no good
himself,--though not before he has done harm enough to his neighbours.
But that only shows that the world wants something else in those it
rewards besides intelligence per se and in the abstract; and is much too
old a world to allow any Jack Horner to pick out its plums for his own
personal gratification. Hence a man of very moderate intelligence, who
believes in God, suffers his heart to beat with human sympathies, and
keeps his eyes off your strongbox, will perhaps gain a vast deal more
power than knowledge ever gives to a rogue.

Wherefore, though I anticipate an outcry against me on the part of the
blockheads, who, strange to say, are the most credulous idolators of
Enlightenment, and if knowledge were power, would rot on a dunghill,
yet, nevertheless, I think all really enlightened men will agree with
me, that when one falls in with detached sharpshooters from the general
March of Enlightenment, it is no reason that we should make ourselves
a target, because Enlightenment has furnished them with a gun. It has,
doubtless, been already remarked by the judicious reader that of the
numerous characters introduced into this work, the larger portion belong