fullest delights cannot be realized except by prisoners. In the vast
halls of Intellect and Reason one may indeed be master, marching (a
little chilled perhaps) with firm step and head erect. But on these
enchanted grounds there is no medium between a wretched clearness of
insight that reduces every curve to a number of straight lines, all
clouds to precipitated vapor, all rainbows to an oblique coincidence
between a sunbeam and a drop of water, and a total surrender of self to
the influences of the flitting moment.

Away with these fellows, who would force their miserable microscopes
before the eyes of these happy gauzy moths!--to-night is only the time
for spinning cobwebs. Hold your breath, philosopher, lest you sweep them
away too rudely! Alas for the airy cobwebs! In that cool anteroom is a
philosopher's broom, hard at work, brushing them remorselessly into a
perplexing dilemma,--the frightful increase of the human race.

"If," said the philosopher, emphatically, "if there were any prospect
of emigrating to the moon, there would be some hope; but in the present
state of affairs we shall soon be eating our own heads off, as the
proverb says. Europe is almost exhausted, the _ultima Thule_ of arable
territory in America has been reached, Asia barely supports her own
immense population; nothing is left but Africa, and she presents a
merely hopeful prospect for the future. In a hundred years, what will
society do for breadstuffs?"

"Live on rice and potatoes," suggested Anthrops.

"Rash boy, and check the advance of civilization! Have you not reflected
that the culture of wheat has been an inseparable adjunct to progress
and refinement? The difficulties required to be overcome in preparing