rom temporary bias made
me look distastefully upon his personality. I resolved to fasten it
upon my dissecting board, and analyse it, relegating it if possible to
its order, genus, and species. Let me try.

A single glance at the specimen before us, gentlemen, tells us that we
have to deal with a remarkable case of arrested development. Although
inexperienced observers might imagine traces of the British colonel,
as found in Pall Mall, in the bristling white moustache, swollen
neck, and red gills, we find neither public school education nor
inefficiency much in evidence anywhere. On the contrary, education
is in a rudimentary condition, though with slightly protuberent
mathematical and fictional glands. Inefficiency, too, is quite absent,
the organ having had but small opportunity to perform its functions.
The subject, we may conclude, gentlemen, has been accustomed to a sort
of mathematical progression and having to ascertain its whereabouts in
the water by "taking the sun." It has been fed chiefly on novels, food
which requires no digestive organs. It has a horror of land generally,
and should never be looked for "on the rocks." You observe this
accumulation of yellow tissue round the heart. The subject is
particularly fond of gold, which metal eventually strangles the heart
and renders its action ineffective and unreliable.

Longfellow, if I remember rightly, drew a very spirited comparison
between the building and launching of a ship and the building and
launching of a state. The state, said he, is a ship. M-yes, in a
poetical way. But no poetry is needed to say that a ship is a state. I
maintain that it is the most perfect state yet conceived; and it is
almost startling to think that so perfect an institution as a ship can
be run successfully without morality, without honesty, without
religion, without even ceremonial--without, in fact, any of those
props usually considered by Tories and Nonconformists to be so vital
to the body-politic.

For, observe, here on this ship we have some forty human beings, each
of whom has certain clearly defined duties to perform, each of whom
owes instant and absolute obedience to his superior officer; each of
whom receives a definite amount of food, drink, tobacco, and sleep
per day; each of whom is bound for a certain period to remain in the
state, but is free to go or stay when that period terminates; each of
whom is at liberty to be of any persuasion he please, of any politica