stork,
might help to prove that "the majority are wicked." As for Periander's
aphorism, that "to industry all things are possible," pyramid-building
old Egypt, or the Druids of Stonehenge, or Scottish proverbial
perseverance in Australian sheep rearing and Canadian timber clearing,
will carry the point by acclamation. Cleobulus, praising "moderation in
all things," would glorify a moral warning of universal application, as
to pleasures, riches, and rank; or especially perhaps as preferring true
temperance before its modern tee-total false pretences; or lauding some
Richard Cromwell's choice of a quiet country life, before the turbulent
honours of a proffered Protectorate; while Thales, with his all but old
English proverb of "more haste, less speed," would apply admirably to
Sultan Mahmoud's ruinous reforms; or to the actual injury gulled Britain
has done to the condition of negroes in general by a vastly too
precipitate abolition of the slave-trade: a vile evil, indeed, but a
cancer of too long creeping to be cured in a day, a rottenness too
deeply seated in the frame-work of the world to be extirpated by such
caustic surgery as fire and sword; or to be quacked into health by
patent gold-salve.

Seven such tales, shrewdly setting out their several aims, and
illustrative of good moral maxims which wise heathens live by, would (I
trow and trust) be somewhat better, more original--ay, and more
entertaining, too--than the common run of magazine adventures. It may
not here be fair to particularize further than in the way of avowing my
unmitigated contempt for the exploits of highwaymen, swindlers, men
about town, and ladies of the _pave_. I protest against gilding crimes,
and palliating follies. Serve the public tables with better food, good
Pandarus. Those commentators on the Newgate calendar, those
bringers-into-fashion of the mysteries of vice, must not be quite
acquitted of the evils they have caused: brilliancy of dialogue, and
graphic power of delineation, are only weapons in a madman's hand, if
the moral be corrupting and profane. To cheerful, hearty,
care-dispelling humour, to such merry faces as Pickwick and
Co.--inimitable Pickwick--hail, all hail! but triumphs of burglary, and
escapes of murderers, aroint ye!

Why then should I throw this cargo overboard?--Friend, my ship is too
full; _if_ I could only do one thing at a time, and could finish it
within the limits of its originating fit, these things all might b