gorgeous that no base can seem more
broad than such stupendous baselessness, and yet any man can bring
it about his ears by being over-curious; when faith fails, a system
based on faith fails also.

Whether the universe is really a paying concern, or whether it is an
inflated bubble that must burst sooner or later, this is another
matter. If people were to demand cash payment in irrefragable
certainty for everything that they have taken hitherto as paper
money on the credit of the bank of public opinion, is there money
enough behind it all to stand so great a drain even on so great a
reserve? Probably there is not, but happily there can be no such
panic, for even though the cultured classes may do so, the
uncultured are too dull to have brains enough to commit such
stupendous folly. It takes a long course of academic training to
educate a man up to the standard which he must reach before he can
entertain such questions seriously, and by a merciful dispensation
of Providence university training is almost as costly as it is
unprofitable. The majority will thus be always unable to afford it,
and will base their opinions on mother wit and current opinion
rather than on demonstration.

So I turned my steps homewards; I saw a good many more things on my
way home, but I was told that I was not to see more this time than I
could get into twelve pages of the Universal Review; I must
therefore reserve any remark which I think might perhaps entertain
the reader for another occasion.

The Aunt, the Nieces, and the Dog {127}

When a thing is old, broken, and useless we throw it on the dust-
heap, but when it is sufficiently old, sufficiently broken, and
sufficiently useless we give money for it, put it into a museum, and
read papers over it which people come long distances to hear. By
and by, when the whirligig of time has brought on another revenge,
the museum itself becomes a dust-heap, and remains so till after
long ages it is rediscovered, and valued as belonging to a neo-
rubbish age--containing, perhaps, traces of a still older paleo-
rubbish civilization. So when people are old, indigent, and in all
respects incapable, we hold them in greater and greater contempt as
their poverty and impotence increase, till they reach the pitch when
they are actually at the point to die, whereon they become sublime.
Then we place every resource our hospitals can command at their
disposal, and show no stint in our consid