ublish a true history of their own order. I am just old enough to remember
some of the last of the squires and parsons who protested against teaching
the poor to read and write. They now write books for the working classes,
give them lectures, and the like. There is now no class, as a class, more
highly educated, broadly educated, and deeply educated, {198} than those
who were, in old times, best described as partridge-popping squireens. I
have myself, when a boy, heard Old Booby speaking with pride of Young Booby
as having too high a spirit to be confined to books: and I suspected that
his dislike to teaching the poor arose in fact from a feeling that they
would, if taught a little, pass his heir.

A. B. recommended the spirit-theory as an hypothesis on which to ground
inquiry; that is, as the means of suggestion for the direction of inquiry.
Every person who knows anything of the progress of physics understands what
is meant; but not the reviewers I speak of. Many of them consider A. B. as
_adopting_ the spirit-hypothesis. The whole book was written, as both the
authors point out, to suggest inquiry to those who are curious; C. D.
firmly believing, A. B. as above. Neither C. D. nor A. B. make any other
pretence. Both dwell upon the absence of authentications and the
suppression of names as utterly preventive of anything like proof. And
A. B. says that his reader "will give him credit, if not himself a goose,
for seeing that the tender of an anonymous cheque would be of equal effect,
whether drawn on the Bank of England or on Aldgate Pump." By this test a
number of the reviewers are found to be geese: for they take the authors as
offering proof, and insist, against the authors, on the very point on which
the authors had themselves insisted beforehand.

Leaving aside imperceptions of this kind, I proceed to notice a clerical
and medical review. I have lived much in the middle ages, especially since
the invention of printing; and from thence I have brought away a high
respect for and grateful recollection of--the priest in everything but
theology, and the physician in everything but medicine. The professional
harness was unfavorable to all progress, except on a beaten road; the
professional blinkers prevented all but the beaten road from being seen:
the professional reins were pulled at the slightest attempt to quicken
pace, even on the permitted path; and the {199} professional whip was
heavily laid on at the slightest a