Are the most daring of all legislators, just (it has been well said) as “cockney equestrians are the most fearless of all riders.”  But the confidence with which they propose their theories is less surprising than the facility with which their propositions have been entertained, and their extravagant pretensions admitted.  We need not marvel at the success of quackery in medicine and theology, when we look at the career of the St. John Longs in political life.  From the time in which the bullion question came out of Pandora’s Scotch mull, parliament has been wearied with the interminable discussions which they have raised there.  Youths who were fresh from college, and men with or without education, who were “in the wane of their wits and infancy of their discretion,” imbibe the radiant darkness of Jeremy Bentham, and forthwith set themselves up as the lights of their generation.  No professors, even in the subtlest ages of scholastic philosophy, were ever more successful in muddying what they found clear, and perplexing what is in itself intelligible.  What are wages?—­this, we are told, is the most difficult and the most important of all the branches of political economy, and this, we are also told, has been obscured by ambiguities and fallacies.  What is rent?  What is value?  Upon these questions, and such as these, which no man of sincere understanding ever proposed to himself or others, they discuss and dilate with as much ardour and to as little effect, as the old philosophers disputed upon the elements of the material creation; bringing to the discussion intellects of the same kind, though as far below them in degree as in the dignity of the subjects upon which their useless subtlety is expended.  But it cannot be said of them, that they, when all is said,

  With much discretion and great want of wit,
  Leave all as wisely as it was at first;

for they mystify those readers who are not disgusted by such ineptitudes, perplex weak minds, and pervert vain ones.  Of such discussions it may be said with the son of Sirach, that “when a man hath done, then he beginneth; and when he leaveth off, then he shall be doubtful.”

Homer.

Seneca reckons among the idle questions, which were unworthy of wise men, the dispute whether Homer wrote both the Iliad and Odyssey, and in what countries Ulysses wandered.  Notwithstanding the “Stoic’s philosophic pride,” these inquiries have still an interest to minds of the highest order—­such is the homage which genius extorts from the remotest countries and from the latest ages.  We noticed, in an article in our last Number, the curious fact of native youths in India performing parts of Shakspeare, and thus on the shores of the Ganges countless minds are deriving delight, perhaps improvement, from the careless and unlaboured verses of the light-hearted Warwickshire deer-stealer.  So, in this country, and over all the continent of Europe, which, when the songs of Homer first gladdened the halls of the