those clergymen whom Alphonso the Sixth of Portugal
drave out of his kingdom for refusing to shorten their pulpit eloquence.
It is possible, that, having been invited into my brother Biglow's
desk, I may have been too little scrupulous in using it for the venting
of my own peculiar doctrines to a congregation drawn together in the
expectation and with the desire of hearing him.

I am not wholly unconscious of a peculiarity of mental organization
which impels me, like the railroad-engine with its train of cars, to run
backward for a short distance in order to obtain a fairer start. I may
compare myself to one fishing from the rocks when the sea runs high,
who, misinterpreting the suction of the undertow for the biting of some
larger fish, jerks suddenly, and finds that he has _caught bottom_,
hauling in upon the end of his line a trail of various _algae_, among
which, nevertheless, the naturalist may haply find somewhat to repay the
disappointment of the angler. Yet have I conscientiously endeavoured to
adapt myself to the impatient temper of the age, daily degenerating more
and more from the high standard of our pristine New England. To the
catalogue of lost arts I would mournfully add also that of listening to
two-hour sermons. Surely we have been abridged into a race of pigmies.
For, truly, in those of the old discourses yet subsisting to us in
print, the endless spinal column of divisions and subdivisions can be
likened to nothing so exactly as to the vertebrae of the saurians, whence
the theorist may conjecture a race of Anakim proportionate to the
withstanding of these other monsters. I say Anakim rather than Nephelim,
because there seem reasons for supposing that the race of those whose
heads (though no giants) are constantly enveloped in clouds (which that
name imports) will never become extinct. The attempt to vanquish the
innumerable _heads_ of one of those aforementioned discourses may supply
us with a plausible interpretation of the second labour of Hercules, and
his successful experiment with fire affords us a useful precedent.

But while I lament the degeneracy of the age in this regard, I cannot
refuse to succumb to its influence. Looking out through my study-window,
I see Mr. Biglow at a distance busy in gathering his Baldwins, of which,
to judge by the number of barrels lying about under the trees, his crop
is more abundant than my own,--by which sight I am admonished to turn to
those orchards of the mi