or mechanical ones, and yet we ignore them most ignominiously.
We think no expense too great to test an Armstrong or a Whitworth gun;
we spend thousands to ascertain how far it will carry, what destructive
force it possesses, and how long it will resist explosion;--why not
appoint a commission of this nature on "conjugate;" why not ascertain,
if we can, what is the weak point in matrimony, and why are explosions
so frequent? Is the "cast" system a bad one, and must we pronounce
"welding" a failure? or, last of all, however wounding to our national
vanity, do "they understand these things better in France"?

ON CLIMBING BOYS.

With the common fate of all things human, it is said that every career
and walk in life has some one peculiar disparagement--something that,
attaching to the duties of the station as a sort of special grievance,
serves to show that none of us, no matter how favoured, are to imagine
there can be any lot exempted from its share of troubles. Ask the
soldier, the sailor, the parson, the doctor, the lawyer, or the actor,
and each will give you a friendly warning to adopt any other career than
his own.

In most cases the _quid amarum_, the one bitter drop, is to be found in
the career itself, something that belongs to that one craft or calling;
just as the white-lead colic, for instance, is the fatal malady of
painters. There are, however, a few rare cases in which the detracting
element attaches itself to the followers and not to the profession, as
though it would seem there was a something in the daily working of that
peculiar craft which warped the minds and coerced the natures of men
to be different from what temperament and character should have made of
them.

The two classes which most prominently exhibit what I mean are somewhat
socially separated, but they have a number of small analogies in common.
They are Sweeps and Statesmen! It would be tempting--but I resist the
temptation--to show how many points of resemblance unite them--how each
works in the dark, in a small, narrow, confined sphere, without view or
outlet; how the tendency of each is to scratch his way upwards and gain
the top, caring wonderfully little how black and dirty the process has
made him. One might even go farther, and mark how, when indolence or
weariness suggested sloth, the stimulus of a little fire underneath,
whether a few lighted straws or a Birmingham mass-meeting, was sure to
quicken progress and excite acti