a gooseberry-bush!"

"I don't see why I should not," replied the sage artificer, with a tone
of reflectiveness; "the leaf is near about the same, and there are
thorns on both; if I make that taller and this shorter, and they grow
the same shape, I don't suppose you know why one should bear
gooseberries any more than the other, as wise as you are."

"Why, to be sure, James," the old woman answered, in a moderate voice,
"I can't say that I do; but I have lived almost through my threescore
years and ten, and I have never heard of gooseberries growing on a
thorn."

"Haven't you, though?" said James; "but then I have, or something pretty
much like it; for I saw the gardener, over yonder, cutting off the head
of a young pear-tree, and he told me he was going to make it bear
apples."

"Well," said the mother, seemingly reconciled, "I know nothing of your
new-fangled ways. I only know it was the finest thorn in the parish;
but, to be sure, now they are more match-like and regular."

I left a story half told. This may seem to be another, but it is in fact
the same. James, in the Sussex-lane, and my friends in Montague-square,
were engaged in the same task, and the result of the one would pretty
fairly measure the successes of the other; both were contravening the
order of nature, and pursuing their own purpose, without consulting the
appointments of Providence.

Fanny was a girl of common understanding; such indeed as suitable
cultivation might have matured into simple good sense; but from which
her parents' scheme of education could produce nothing but pretension
that could not be supported, and an affectation of what could never be
attained. Conscious of the want of all perceptible talent in her child,
Mrs. A. from the first told the stories of talent opening late, and the
untimely blighting of premature intellect; and, to the last, maintained
the omnipotence of cultivation.

On every new proof of the smallness of her mind, another science was
added to enlarge it. Languages, dead and living, were to be to her the
keys of knowledge; but they unlocked nothing to Fanny but their own
grammars and vocabularies, which she learned assiduously, without so
much as wondering what they meant. The more dull she proved, the more
earnestly she was plied. She was sent to school to try the spur of
emulation; and brought home again for the advantage of more exclusive
attention. And, as still the progress lagged, all feminine employ a