in the universe, and recounting its joys.  ‘Yes,’ was the reply.  Said the little man, with prompt decision, ‘Then I’ll no gang!’ He must have been a wretched screw of a Christian who left that impression on a young child’s heart.  There is unsoundness in the man who cannot listen to the praises of another man’s merit without feeling as though this were something taken from himself.  And it is amusing, though sad, to gee how such folk take for granted in others the same pretty enviousness which they feel in themselves.  They will go to one writer, painter, preacher, and begin warmly to praise the doings of another man in the same vocation; and when I have seen the man addressed listen to and add to the praises with the hearty, self-forgetting sincerity of a generous mind, I have witnessed the bitter disappointment of the petty malignants at the failure of their poisoned dart.  Generous honesty quite baffles such.  If their dart ever wounds you, reader, it is because you deserve that it should.  There is unsoundness in the kindly, loveable man, whose opinions are preposterous, and whose conversation that of a jackass.  But still, who can help loving the man, occasionally to be met, whose heart is right and whose talk is twaddle?  Let me add, that I have met with one or two cases in which conscience was quite paralysed, but all the other intellectual faculties were right.  Surely there is no more deplorable instance of the mental screw.  Tou may find the notorious cheat who is never out of church, and who fancies himself a most creditable man.  You will find the malicious tale-bearer and liar, who attends all the prayer-meetings within her reach, and who thanks God (like an individual in former days) that she is so much better than other women.

In the case of commonplace screws, if they do their work well, it is for the most part in spite of their being screws.  It is because they are sound in the main, in those portions of their mental constitution which their daily work calls into play; and because they are seldom required to do those things which their unsoundness makes them unfit to do.  You know, if a horse never fell lame except when smartly trotted down a hill four miles long, you might say that for practical purposes that horse was never lame at all.  For the single contingency to which its powers are unequal would hardly ever occur.  In like manner, if the mind of a tradesman is quite equal to the management of his business and the respectable training of his family, you may say that the tradesman’s mind is for practical purposes a sound and good one; although if called to consider some important political question, such as that of the connexion of Church and State, his judgment might be purely idiotical.  You see, he is hardly ever required to put his mind (so to speak) at a hill at which it would break down.  I have walked a mile along the road with a respectable Scotch farmer, talking of country matters; and I have concluded that I had hardly ever conversed with a shrewder and more sensible man.  But having accidentally chanced to speak of a certain complicated political question, I found that quoad hoc my friend’s intellect was that of a baby.  I had just come upon the four-mile descent which would knock up the horse which for ordinary work was sound.