d arithmetic, would it have thrown on several things
for him!

In all cases, therefore, we will agree with the judicious Mrs. Glass:
'First catch your hare!' First get your man; all is got: he can learn
to do all things, from making boots, to decreeing judgments, governing
communities; and will do them like a man. Catch your no-man,--alas,
have you not caught the terriblest Tartar in the world! Perhaps all
the terribler, the quieter and gentler he looks. For the mischief that
one blockhead, that every blockhead does, in a world so feracious,
teeming with endless results as ours, no ciphering will sum up. The
quack bootmaker is considerable; as corn-cutters can testify, and
desperate men reduced to buckskin and list-shoes. But the quack
priest, quack high-priest, the quack king! Why do not all just
citizens rush, half-frantic, to stop him, as they would a
conflagration? Surely a just citizen _is_ admonished by God and his
own Soul, by all silent and articulate voices of this Universe, to do
what in _him_ lies towards relief of this poor blockhead-quack, and of
a world that groans under him. Run swiftly; relieve him,--were it even
by extinguishing him! For all things have grown so old, tinder-dry,
combustible; and he is more ruinous than conflagration. Sweep him
_down_, at least; keep him strictly within the hearth: he will then
cease to be conflagration; he will then become useful, more or less,
as culinary fire. Fire is the best of servants; but what a master!
This poor blockhead too is born, for uses: why, elevating him to
mastership, will you make a conflagration, a parish-curse or
world-curse of him?

FOOTNOTES:

[12] _Jocelini Chronica_, p. 25.

CHAPTER X.

GOVERNMENT.

How Abbot Samson, giving his new subjects seriatim the kiss of
fatherhood in the St. Edmundsbury chapterhouse, proceeded with
cautious energy to set about reforming their disjointed distracted way
of life; how he managed with his Fifty rough _Milites_ (Feudal
Knights), with his lazy Farmers, remiss refractory Monks, with Pope's
Legates, Viscounts, Bishops, Kings; how on all sides he laid about him
like a man, and putting consequence on premiss, and everywhere the
saddle on the right horse, struggled incessantly to educe organic
method out of lazily fermenting wreck,--the careful reader will
discern, not without true interest, in these pages of Jocelin Boswell.
In most antiquarian quaint costume, not of garments alone, but of
thought