_, so from one polypus _nothing_ any
number of similar ones may be produced. I would recommend to the
attention of _viva voce_ debaters and controversialists the admirable
example of the monk Copres, who, in the fourth century, stood for half
an hour in the midst of a great fire, and thereby silenced a Manichaean
antagonist who had less of the salamander in him. As for those who
quarrel in print, I have no concern with them here, since the eyelids
are a Divinely-granted shield against all such. Moreover, I have
observed in many modern books that the printed portion is becoming
gradually smaller, and the number of blank or fly-leaves (as they are
called) greater. Should this fortunate tendency of literature continue,
books will grow more valuable from year to year, and the whole Serbonian
bog yield to the advances of firm arable land.

I have wondered, in the Representatives' Chamber of our own
Commonwealth, to mark how little impression seemed to be produced by
that emblematic fish suspended over the heads of the members. Our wiser
ancestors, no doubt, hung it there as being the animal which the
Pythagoreans reverenced for its silence, and which certainly in that
particular does not so well merit the epithet _cold-blooded_, by which
naturalists distinguish it, as certain bipeds, afflicted with
ditch-water on the brain, who take occasion to tap themselves in Fanueil
Halls, meeting-houses, and other places of public resort.--H. W.]

FOOTNOTES:

[13] The speaker is of a different mind from Tully, who, in his recently
discovered tractate _De Republica_, tells us,--_Nec vero habere virtutem
satis est, quasi artem aliquam, nisi utare_, and from our Milton, who
says,--"I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised
and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but
slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for,
_not without dust and heat_."--_Areop._ He had taken the words out of
the Roman's mouth, without knowing it, and might well exclaim with
Austin (if saint's name may stand sponsor for a curse). _Pereant qui
ante nos nostra dixerint!_--H. W.

[14] That was a pithy saying of Persius, and fits our politicians
without a wrinkle,--_Magister artis, ingeniique largitor venter._--H. W.

[15] There is truth yet in this of Juvenal,--

"Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas."

[16] Jortin is willing to allow of other miracles besides those recorded
in Holy Writ,