spect him.

I much question whether philology, or the passion for languages, requires
so little of an apology as the love for horses. It has been said, I
believe, that the more languages a man speaks, the more a man is he;
which is very true, provided he acquires languages as a medium for
becoming acquainted with the thoughts and feelings of the various
sections into which the human race is divided; but, in that case, he
should rather be termed a philosopher than a philologist--between which
two the difference is wide indeed! An individual may speak and read a
dozen languages, and yet be an exceedingly poor creature, scarcely half a
man; and the pursuit of tongues for their own sake, and the mere
satisfaction of acquiring them, surely argues an intellect of a very low
order; a mind disposed to be satisfied with mean and grovelling things;
taking more pleasure in the trumpery casket than in the precious treasure
which it contains; in the pursuit of words, than in the acquisition of
ideas.

I cannot help thinking that it was fortunate for myself, who am, to a
certain extent, a philologist, that with me the pursuit of languages has
been always modified by the love of horses; for scarcely had I turned my
mind to the former, when I also mounted the wild cob, and hurried forth
in the direction of the Devil's Hill, scattering dust and flint-stones on
every side; that ride, amongst other things, taught me that a lad with
thews and sinews was intended by nature for something better than mere
word-culling; and if I have accomplished anything in after life worthy of
mentioning, I believe it may partly be attributed to the ideas which that
ride, by setting my blood in a glow, infused into my brain. I might,
otherwise, have become a mere philologist; one of those beings who toil
night and day in culling useless words for some _opus magnum_ which
Murray will never publish, and nobody ever read; beings without
enthusiasm, who, having never mounted a generous steed, cannot detect a
good point in Pegasus himself; like a certain philologist, who, though
acquainted with the exact value of every word in the Greek and Latin
languages, could observe no particular beauty in one of the most glorious
of Homer's rhapsodies. What knew he of Pegasus? he had never mounted a
generous steed; the merest jockey, had the strain been interpreted to
him, would have called it a brave song!--I return to the brave cob.

On a certain day I had been out