r
self-possession would stop the whole process. It is the work of
witchcraft, and yet sport for children. Some of the other feats are
quite as curious and wonderful, such as the balancing the artificial
tree and shooting a bird from each branch through a quill; though none
of them have the elegance or facility of the keeping up of the brass
balls. You are in pain for the result, and glad when the experiment is
over; they are not accompanied with the same unmixed, unchecked delight
as the former; and I would not give much to be merely astonished without
being pleased at the game time. As to the swallowing of the sword, the
police ought to interfere to prevent it. When I saw the Indian Juggler
do the same things before, his feet were bare, and he had large rings on
the toes, which kept turning round all the time of the performance, as
if they moved of themselves.--The hearing a speech in Parliament drawled
or stammered out by the Honourable Member or the Noble Lord; the ringing
the changes on their common-places, which any one could repeat after
them as well as they, stirs me not a jot, shakes not my good opinion of
myself; but the seeing the Indian Jugglers does. It makes me ashamed of
myself. I ask what there is that I can do as well as this? Nothing. What
have I been doing all my life? Have I been idle, or have I nothing to
show for all my labour and pains? Or have I passed my time in pouring
words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then
down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and
looking for causes in the dark and not finding them? Is there no one
thing in which I can challenge competition, that I can bring as an
instance of exact perfection in which others cannot find a flaw? The
utmost I can pretend to is to write a description of what this fellow
can do. I can write a book: so can many others who have not even learned
to spell. What abortions are these Essays! What errors, what ill-pieced
transitions, what crooked reasons, what lame conclusions! How little
is made out, and that little how ill! Yet they are the best I can do.
I endeavour to recollect all I have ever observed or thought upon a
subject, and to express it as nearly as I can. Instead of writing on
four subjects at a time, it is as much as I can manage to keep the
thread of one discourse clear and unentangled. I have also time on
my hands to correct my opinions, and polish my periods; but the one I
cannot, a