laugh at you if you quibbled about the distinction between a
horse and a sheep. I divide the illogical--I mean people who have not that
amount of natural use of sound inference which is really not uncommon--into
three classes:--First class, three varieties: the Niddy, the Noddy, and the
Noodle. Second class, three varieties: the Niddy-Noddy, the Niddy-Noodle,
and the Noddy-Noodle. Third class, undivided: the Niddy-Noddy-Noodle. No
person has a right to be angry with me for more than one of these
subdivisions.

The want of distinction was illustrated to me, when a boy, about 1820, by
the report of a trial which I shall never forget: boys read newspapers more
keenly than men. Every now and then a bench of country magistrates rather
astonishes the town populations, accustomed to rub their brains[341]
against one another. Such a story as the following would, {197} in our day,
bring down grave remarks from above: but I write of the olden (or
Eldon[342]) time, when nothing but conviction in a court of record would
displace a magistrate. In that day the third-class amalgamator of distinct
things was often on the bench of quarter-sessions.

An attorney was charged with having been out at night poaching. A clear
_alibi_ was established; and perjury had certainly been committed. The
whole gave reason to suspect that some ill-willers thought the bench
disliked the attorney so much that any conviction was certain on any
evidence. The bench did dislike the attorney: but not to the extent of
thinking he could snare any partridges in the fields while he was asleep in
bed, except the dream-partridges which are not always protected by the
dream-laws. So the chairman said, "Mr. ----, you are discharged; but you
should consider this one of the most fortunate days of your life." The
attorney indignantly remonstrated, but the magistrate was right; for he
said, "Mr. ----, you have frequently been employed to defend poachers: have
you been careful to impress upon them the enormity of their practices?" It
appeared in a wrangling conversation that the magistrates saw little moral
difference between poaching and being a poacher's professional defender
without lecturing him on his wickedness: but they admitted with reluctance,
that there was a legal distinction; and the brain of N^3 could no further
go. This is nearly fifty years ago; and Westernism was not quite extinct.
If the present lords of the hills and the valleys want to shine, let them
p