defects of your education you are more disqualified to be a working man than to be the ruler of an empire. The gulf, sir, is below; and the true learned arts—those which alone are safe from the competition of insurgent laymen—are those which give his title to the artisan.’ ‘This is a very pompous fellow,’ said Challoner, in the ear of his companion. ‘He is immense,’ said Somerset. Just then the door of the divan was opened, and a third young fellow made his appearance, and rather bashfully requested some tobacco. He was younger than the others; and, in a somewhat meaningless and altogether English way, he was a handsome lad. When he had been served, and had lighted his pipe and taken his place upon the sofa, he recalled himself to Challoner by the name of Desborough. ‘Desborough, to be sure,’ cried Challoner. ‘Well, Desborough, and what do you do?’ ‘The fact is,’ said Desborough, ‘that I am doing nothing.’ ‘A private fortune possibly?’ inquired the other. ‘Well, no,’ replied Desborough, rather sulkily. ‘The fact is that I am waiting for something to turn up.’ ‘All in the same boat!’ cried Somerset. ‘And have you, too, one hundred pounds?’ ‘Worse luck,’ said Mr. Desborough. ‘This is a very pathetic sight, Mr. Godall,’ said Somerset: ‘Three futiles.’ ‘A character of this crowded age,’ returned the salesman. ‘Sir,’ said Somerset, ‘I deny that the age is crowded; I will admit one fact, and one fact only: that I am futile, that he is futile, and that we are all three as futile as the devil. What am I? I have smattered law, smattered letters, smattered geography, smattered mathematics; I have even a working knowledge of judicial astrology; and here I stand, all London roaring by at the street’s end, as impotent as any baby. I have a prodigious contempt for my maternal uncle; but without him, it is idle to deny it, I should simply resolve into my elements like an unstable mixture. I begin to perceive that it is necessary to know some one thing to the bottom—were it only literature. And yet, sir, the
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