itute of fixed
purpose. For though many of my actions seem to have objects, and all
of them somehow run into each other; yet, where is the grand result?
To what final purpose, do I walk about, eat, think, dream? To what
great end, does Mohi there, now stroke his beard?"

"But I was doing it unconsciously," said Mohi, dropping his hand, and
lifting his head.

"Just what I would be at, old man. 'What we do, we do blindly,' says
old Bardianna. Many things we do, we do without knowing,--as with you
and your beard, Mohi. And many others we know not, in their true
bearing at least, till they are past. Are not half our lives spent in
reproaches for foregone actions, of the true nature and consequences
of which, we were wholly ignorant at the time? Says old Bardianna,
'Did I not so often feel an appetite for my yams, I should think every
thing a dream;'--so puzzling to him, seemed the things of this Mardi.
But Alla-Malolla goes further. Says he, 'Let us club together, fellow-
riddles:--Kings, clowns, and intermediates. We are bundles of comical
sensations; we bejuggle ourselves into strange phantasies: we are air,
wind, breath, bubbles; our being is told in a tick.'"

"Now, then, Babbalanja," said Media, "what have you come to in all
this rhapsody? You everlastingly travel in a circle."

"And so does the sun in heaven, my lord; like me, it goes round, and
gives light as it goes. Old Bardianna, too, revolved. He says so
himself. In his roundabout chapter on Cycles and Epicycles, with Notes
on the Ecliptic, he thus discourseth:--'All things revolve upon some
center, to them, fixed; for the centripetal is ever too much for the
centrifugal. Wherefore, it is a perpetual cycling with us, without
progression; and we fly round, whether we will or no. To stop, were to
sink into space. So, over and over we go, and round and round; double-
shuffle, on our axis, and round the sun.' In an another place, he
says:--'There is neither apogee nor perigee, north nor south, right
nor left; what to-night is our zenith, to-morrow is our nadir; stand
as we will, we stand on our heads; essay to spring into the air, and
down we come; here we stick; our very bones make glue.'"

"Enough, enough, Babbalanja," cried Media. "You are a very wise
Mardian; but the wisest Mardians make the most consummate fools."

"So they do, my lord; but I was interrupted. I was about to say, that
there is no place but the universe; no limit but the limitless; no
botto