thized as a fellow-sufferer in persecution. "Poor Wolf," he would say, "thy mistress leads thee a dog's life of it; but never mind, my lad, whilst I live thou shalt never want a friend to stand by thee!" Wolf would wag his tail, look wistfully in his master's face, and if dogs can feel pity, I verily believe he reciprocated the sentiment with all his heart.

SKETCH BOOK.

ON GREATNESS.

WE have more than once in the course of our work, been most jocosely familiar with great personages; and, in truth, treated them with as little ceremony, respect, and consideration, as if they had been our most particular friends. Now we would not suffer the mortification of having our readers even suspect us of an intimacy of the kind; assuring them we are extremely choice in our intimates, and uncommonly circumspect in avoiding connections with all doubtful characters; particularly pimps, bailiffs, lottery-brokers, chevaliers of industry, and great men. world in general is pretty well aware of what is to be understood by the former classes of delinquents; but as the latter has never, I believe, been specifically defined, and as we are determined to instruct our readers to the extent of our abilities, and their limited comprehension, it may not be amiss here to let them know what we understand by a great man.

The

First, therefore, let us (editors and kings are always plural) premise, that there are two kinds of greatness;-one conferred by Heaven-the exalted nobility of the soul; the other, a spurious distinction, engendered by the mob, and lavished upon its favourites. The former of these distinctions we have already contemplated with reverence; the latter we will take this opportunity to strip naked before our unenlightened readers; so that if by chance any of them are held in ignominious thraldom by this base circulation of false coin, they may forthwith emancipate themselves from such inglorious delusion.

It is a fictitious value given to individuals by public caprice, as bankers give an impression to a worthless slip of paper, thereby giving it a currency for infinitely more than its intrinsic value. Every nation has its peculiar coin, and peculiar great men; neither of which will, for the most part, pass current out of the country where they are stamped. Your true mob-created great man is like a note of one of the little New England banks, and his value depreciates in proportion to the distance from home. In England, a great man is he who has most ribands and gew-gaws on his coat, most horses in his carriage, most slaves in his retinue, or most toad-eaters at his table; in France, he who can most dexterously flourish his heels above his head-Duport is most incontestably the greatest man in France!-when the Emperor is absent. The greatest man in China is he who can trace his ancestry up to the moon;

and in this country our great men may generally hunt down their predigree until it burrows in the dirt like a rabbit. To be concise; our great men are those who are most expert at crawling on allfours, and have the happiest facility in dragging and winding themselves along in the dirt like very reptiles. This may seem a paradox to many of my readers, who, with great good-nature be it hinted, are too stupid to look beyond the mere surface of our invaluable writings; and often pass over the knowing allusion, and poignant meaning, that is slily couched beneath. It is for the benefit of such helpless ignorants, who have no other creed but the opinion of the mob, that I shall trace-as far as it is possible to follow him in his ascent from insignificance, the rise, progress, and completion of a little great man.

In a logocracy, to use the sage Mustapha's phrase, it is not absolutely necessary to the formation of a great man that he should be either wise or valiant, upright or honourable. On the contrary, daily experience shows that these qualities rather impede his preferment, inasmuch as they are prone to render him too inflexibly erect, and are directly at variance with that willowy suppleness which enables a man to wind, and twist, through all the nooks and turns and dark winding passages that lead to greatness. The grand requisite for climbing the rugged hill of popularity, the summit of which is the seat of power,is to be useful. And here once more, for the sake of our readers, who are of course not so wise as ourselves, I must explain what we understand

by usefulness. The horse, in his native state, is wild, swift, impetuous, full of majesty, and of a most generous spirit. It is then the animal is noble, exalted, and useless. But entrap him, manacle him, cudgel him, break down his lofty spirit, put the curb into his mouth, the load upon his back, and reduce him into servile obedience to the bridle and the lash, and it is then he becomes useful. Your jackass is one of the most useful animals in existence. If my readers do not now understand what I mean by usefulness, I give them all up for most absolute nincoms.

To rise in this country a man must first descend. The aspiring politician may be compared to that indefatigable insect called the tumbler, pronounced by a distinguished personage to be the only industrious animal in Virginia; which buries itself in filth, and works ignobly in the dirt, until it forms a little ball of dirt, which it rolls laboriously along, like Diogenes in his tub; sometimes head, sometimes tail foremost, pilfering from every rat and mud hole, and increasing its ball of greatness by the contributions of the kennel. Just so the candidate for greatness:-he plunges into that mass of obscenity, the mob; labours in dirt and oblivion, and makes unto himself the rudiments of a popular name from the admiration and praises of rogues, ignoramuses, and blackguards. His name once started, onward he goes struggling aud puffing, and pushing it before him; collecting new tributes from the dregs and offals of the land as he proceeds, until having gathered together a mighty mass of popularity, he mounts it in triumph,