s?'

_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ Troth, no, my lord. I think, if he were among us,
he would give up the search as hopeless. He found it so in his own day,
and he would find it still more so now. Jack was both merry and wise.
We have less mirth in practice; and we have more wisdom in pretension,
which Jack would not have admitted.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ He would have found it like Juvenal's search for
patriotic virtue, when Catiline was everywhere, and Brutus and Cato were
nowhere.{1}

1 Et Catilinam quocumque in populo videas, quocumque sub
axe: sed nee Brutus erit, Bruti nec avunculus usquam.
--Juv. Sat. xiv. 41-43.

_Lord Curryfin._ Well, among us, if Jack did not find his superior,
or even his equal, he would not have been at a loss for company to his
mind. There is enough mirth for those who choose to enjoy it, and wisdom
too, perhaps as much as he would have cared for. We ought to have more
wisdom, as we have clearly more science.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Science is one thing, and wisdom is another.
Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut
their own fingers. If you look at the results which science has brought
in its train, you will find them to consist almost wholly in elements of
mischief. See how much belongs to the word Explosion alone, of which the
ancients knew nothing. Explosions of powder-mills and powder-magazines;
of coal-gas in mines and in houses; of high-pressure engines in ships
and boats and factories. See the complications and refinements of modes
of destruction, in revolvers and rifles and shells and rockets and
cannon. See collisions and wrecks and every mode of disaster by land and
by sea, resulting chiefly from the insanity for speed, in those who for
the most part have nothing to do at the end of the race, which they run
as if they were so many Mercuries speeding with messages from Jupiter.
Look at our scientific drainage, which turns refuse into poison. Look at
the subsoil of London, whenever it is turned up to the air, converted by
gas leakage into one mass of pestilent blackness, in which no vegetation
can flourish, and above which, with the rapid growth of the ever-growing
nuisance, no living thing will breathe with impunity. Look at our
scientific machinery, which has destroyed domestic manufacture, which
has substituted rottenness for strength in the thing made, and physical
degradation in crowded towns for healthy and comfortable country life
i