mount guard over nothing,--a clasp made of steel digged from the bowels
of the earth, and smelted and hammered and burnished, only to keep
watch and ward after the thief has made his visit leisurely. 'Tis an
egregious chaos. 'Tis an absurd vacuum. To make it still more
unpleasant, there are your memoranda. You are reminded that upon
Thursday last you purchased butter flavous, or chops rosy; but where is
hint, sign, direction, or instruction touching the purchase of either
upon Thursday next? How much would it have helped poor Belisarius, in
his sore estate, if he had kept a record of his household expenses, as
my friend Minimus does? By the same token, he sometimes makes odd
misentries, pious figurative fictions, in order to save the feelings of
Mrs. Minimus, who is auditor-general and comptroller of the household.
And speaking of Belisarius, just fancy the hard fate of that gallant
and decayed soldier! Figure him left naked by the master whom he had
served so well, crying out for a beggarly _obolus_! Now this, you must
know, was one of the least respectable coins of ancient times, being of
about the value of one farthing sterling. If the poor man had got his
battered old helmet full of them, the ponderous alms would not have
driven the wolf gaunt and grinning many paces from his squalid
home,--always admitting that he had any home, however squalid, to crawl
into at sunset. And how often he crouched and whined, white-headed and
bare-headed all day, and did not get a _lepton_ (which was, in value,
thirty-one three hundred thirty-sixths of an English farthing) for his
pains! 'Tis such a pitiful story, that I am truly glad that the eminent
German scholar, Nicotinus of Heidelberg, in his work upon the Greek
Particle, has pretty clearly shown (Vol. xxviii. pp. 2850 to 5945) that
the story may be regarded as a myth, illustrating the great, eternal,
and universal danger of ultimate seediness, in which the most
prosperous creatures live. And just think of Napoleon squabbling about
wine with Sir Hudson Lowe,--the hero of Areola, without courage enough