ic goose reverting to its wild habit of
nocturnal feeding," remarked my narrator, dwelling characteristically
upon the natural-history aspect of the fact.

Percival was almost incapable of an irrelevancy. The survey was the
business in hand, and he rarely discoursed much of things disconnected
with it, except, perhaps, when we were retracing our routes, or when the
labors of the day were over. Of poets and poetry he was not inclined to
speak. I never heard him quote a line, either his own or another's, nor
indulge in a single poetic observation concerning the objects which
met us in our wanderings. Indeed, he confessed that he no longer felt
disposed to write verses, being satisfied that his productions were
not acceptable to the prevailing taste; although he admitted that he
composed a few stanzas occasionally, in order to make trial of some
unusual measure or new language. He told me that he had versified in
thirteen languages; and I have heard from others that he had imitated
all the Greek and German metres.

Of politics, foreign and domestic, he talked frequently, but always
philosophically and dispassionately, much as if he were speaking of
geological stratification. His views of humanity were deduced from a
most extensive survey of the race in all its historical and geographical
relations. He distinctly recognized the fact of its steady advance
from one stage to another, in accordance with a plan of intellectually
organic development, as marked as that detected by the geologist in
the gradual preparation of the earth for the abode of our species. The
slowness and seeming vacillation of man's upward movement could not
stagger his faith; for if it had taken thousands of ages to make earth
habitable, why should it not take thousands more to bring man to his
completeness? Equally free was he from misgiving on account of the
remaining presence of so much misery and wretchedness; for these he
considered as the indispensable stimuli to progress. Even war, he used
to say, is sometimes necessary to the welfare of nations, as sickness
and sorrow plainly are to that of individuals; although, to his moral
sense, the human authors of this scourge were no more admirable than the
devisers of any private calamity. Improvements in knowledge he regarded
as the only elements of real progress; and these he looked upon as true
germinal principles, bound up organically in the constitution of the
human soul. Indeed, that philosophical