ure of
their organisation. I no more blame or praise a man for what is called
vice or virtue, than I tax a tuft of hemlock with malevolence, or
discover great philanthropy in a field of potatoes, seeing that the
men and the plants are equally incapacitated, by their original
internal organisation, and the combinations and modifications of
external circumstances, from being any thing but what they are. _Quod
victus fateare necesse est_."

"Yet you destroy the hemlock," said Squire Headlong, "and cultivate
the potato; that is my way, at least."

"I do," said Mr Cranium; "because I know that the farinaceous
qualities of the potato will tend to preserve the great requisites of
unity and coalescence in the various constituent portions of my animal
republic; and that the hemlock, if gathered by mistake for parsley,
chopped up small with butter, and eaten with a boiled chicken, would
necessitate a great derangement, and perhaps a total decomposition, of
my corporeal mechanism."

"Very well," said the squire; "then you are necessitated to like Mr
Escot better than Mr Panscope?"

"That is a _non sequitur_," said Mr Cranium.

"Then this is a _sequitur_," said the squire: "your daughter and Mr
Escot are necessitated to love one another; and, unless you feel
necessitated to adhibit your consent, they will feel necessitated to
dispense with it; since it does appear to moral and political
economists to be essentially inherent in the eternal fitness of
things."

Mr Cranium fell into a profound reverie: emerging from which, he said,
looking Squire Headlong full in the face, "Do you think Mr Escot would
give me that skull?"

"Skull!" said Squire Headlong.

"Yes," said Mr Cranium, "the skull of Cadwallader."

"To be sure he will," said the squire.

"Ascertain the point," said Mr Cranium.

"How can you doubt it?" said the squire.

"I simply know," said Mr Cranium, "that if it were once in my
possession, I would not part with it for any acquisition on earth,
much less for a wife. I have had one: and, as marriage has been
compared to a pill, I can very safely assert that _one is a dose_; and
my reason for thinking that he will not part with it is, that its
extraordinary magnitude tends to support his system, as much as its
very marked protuberances tend to support mine; and you know his own
system is of all things the dearest to every man of liberal thinking
and a philosophical tendency."

The Squire flew over to Mr Escot