f which they claim credit, and obtain it as
readily as their fellow adventurers in trade. If they succeed in setting
up a present reputation, their ambition extends no further. The very
vanity which finds its present food produces in them a practical contempt
for any fame beyond what they can live to enjoy; and this sense of its
insignificance to themselves is what better minds hardly attain, even in
their saddest wisdom, till this world darkens upon them, and they feel
that they are on the confines of eternity. But every age has had its
sciolists, and will continue to have them; and in every age literature
has also had, and will continue to have its sincere and devoted
followers, few in number, but enough to trim the everlasting lamp. It is
when sciolists meddle with State affairs that they become the pests of a
nation; and this evil, for the reason which you have assigned, is more
likely to increase than to be diminished. In your days all extant
history lay within compassable bounds: it is a fearful thing to consider
now what length of time would be required to make studious man as
conversant with the history of Europe since those days, as he ought to
be, if he would be properly qualified for holding a place in the councils
of a kingdom. Men who take the course of public life will not, nor can
they be expected to, wait for this. Youth and ardour, and ambition and
impatience, are here in accord with worldly prudence; if they would reach
the goal for which they start, they must begin the career betimes; and
such among them as may be conscious that their stock of knowledge is less
than it ought to be for such a profession, would not hesitate on that
account to take an active part in public affairs, because they have a
more comfortable consciousness that they are quite as well informed as
the contemporaries, with whom they shall have to act, or to contend. The
_quantulum_ at which Oxenstern admired would be a large allowance now.
For any such person to suspect himself of deficiency would, in this age
of pretension, be a hopeful symptom; but should he endeavour to supply
it, he is like a mail-coach traveller, who is to be conveyed over
macadamised roads at the rate of nine miles an hour, including stoppages,
and must therefore take at his minuted meals whatever food is readiest.
He must get information for immediate use, and with the smallest cost of
time; and therefore it is sought in abstracts and epitomes, which af