"If all your money was offered me to stand in
your shoes," said the captain, looking after him
—"rich as you are, I wouldn't take it!"

SMALL-BEER CHRONICLES.

THE Small-Beer Chronicler in his last report
had something to say on the subject of "our
Greatness." He will now, with permission,
venture to approach a topic of a humbler kind,
and say a word or two about OUR LITTLENESS.

In sending in the last report which it was his
duty to make, the Chronicler felt some degree
of pride and elation. It was his business to
deal with what we know, and what we can do;
and, in the main, things creditable to us, and
calculated to raise us in our own esteem, were
dwelt on. But now the case is different, and
in that influential examination of our exact
condition which the S. B. Chronicler feels it
part of his function to make, it becomes necessary
that he should call attention to some of the
things which we do not know, or which we can
not do, and perhaps to some matters also which
are not entirely creditable to us, or calculated to
raise into additional prominence that bump of
self-esteem which, according to phrenologists,
we all wear—as the toad wears his jewel—on
the tops of our heads.

What unexplored regions, to which the mind
of man cannot reach, rise up dimly in one's
imagination when that function is turned towards
a consideration of the things that we do not
know and the things that we can not do. It
would be to little purpose to dwell on them.
The world on whose outer crust we tread, the
sky that we look on, the vast space with those
vast globes peopling it at intervals—to say that
we know little of these things is to speak a
truism. Is any object in that great collection
of objects at Kensington calculated materially
to increase our knowledge of all those square
miles of furnace, or whatever else, which lie
between us and Australia—not as the crow flies,
but as the mole works? The miner who should
tunnel his way from here to Melbourne in a
straight line, what would lie have to tell us
when he got back again? Suppose that some
aëronaut were to get away into regions
where the earth's attraction was no longer felt,
and could not get back again. When he had
drifted long enough into space, where would he
get to? The man would die, as thought and
speculation die when they get too far from earth.
The thought which is wafted too high, loses
breath, becomes giddy, and can live no longer
away from the mists which shroud us here below.

Our littleness is colossal. It was but the other
day that a great ascent was made into the air,
the largest balloon in existence being inflated
for the purpose. The travellers who made that
ascent passed first through one atmosphere and
then another, the temperature decreased,
increased, decreased again. The influence of the
sun was felt less and more by turns. The clouds
were left beneath, and the shadow of the balloon
was seen on them as they lay below it. The blue
sky was left—that is, the blue sky as we see it—
and a deep blue, deeper than Lapis-Lazuli, was
all around. And now the breath of the voyagers
comes thick and short, their finger-nails are
changed in colour, their pulses quicken. A
terrible situation, an awful journey. But now
comes our littleness to their aid. The traditions
of a lifetime surge up to them, like a
Deus ex machina coming the wrong way; the
memories of civic feasts and wholesome mundane
practices, mingle with their glimpses among the
clouds, and they set to work to drink a series
of toasts which would have astonished the echoes,
if there had been any. The Queen, the Gas
Company by whose agency the balloon was
inflated, and for aught I know, the Ladies, and the
Volunteers, were drunk in quick succession, and
down comes the car again to the regions of taxes
and butcher's-bills!

Well! These gentlemen were right. It
would not do. The Lapis-Lazuli around and
above the shadow of their vessel on the wrong
side of the clouds, and the world like a map
spread out beneath them, were too much. The
toasts were a link with Buckingham Palace,
and with public companies, and the common-places
of earth, and there was health and safety
in them. The right men to trust themselves in
the clouds, depend on it, are the men who
"propose" a gas company when they get there.
Such a people as is represented by these gentlemen
launched into space, with their eyes starting
out of their heads, their nails blue, their
hearts palpitating, and in this condition gasping
out loyal and business-like sentiments,—such a
people can be driven with reins of horsehair,
provided always that those reins are held in
gentlemanly fingers, and that the political coachman
has a "sufficient stake in the country."

This curious aeronautical illustration of our
littleness we have arrived at, while discussing
the things of which our knowledge is small or
altogether wanting. But for instances of such
ignorance there is little need that we should
turn our thoughts downward to the earth's
centre, or upward to the eternity of space.
There is very near to us, nay bound up within
every one of us, that which we possess without
understanding it, that which absolutely belongs
to us and concerning which we know nothing—
our own lives. Where does that vital element
reside? What is it? What is our power of
thought, our will? When I take this pen from
this paper and dip it in the inkstand, I know
the process by which the material act is
accomplished, I know that certain muscles attached
to certain bones have moved my arm by that
contractile power which is inherent in them.
But how was the order conveyed to those
muscles to act? Again, in the course of
conversation it is necessary that I should remember
some name, some date, some historical incident,
or even a tune. At first I cannot do so, but at
last, after ransacking my memory and turning
its contents over and over, I succeed in recalling
what is wanted. Who can tell me where that
storehouse is, where that thing, whatever it
was, was registered and laid up till wanted?
Impatient of "our littleness" in these respects,