THE SHORT GENTLEMAN. 



A PHYSICAL despotism governs the social world not less than mon- 

 archs and oligarchs sway the political. Moralists indeed tell us that, 

 notwithstanding all the diversities of human endowments, every man 

 inherits upon the whole an equal share of the materials for happiness 

 that the weights in the great race of existence are after all accom- 

 modatingly distributed amongst the entry of runners. They mean 

 well enough ; and may have disciples about the breakfast hour in 

 night-gowns and slippers; but few or none after hat and cane have 

 been put in requisition. Certainly keeping up the racing figure just 

 employed it is pre eminently desirable that we should all start fairly 

 " handicapped," for our mundane career; but, alas! Nature has 

 formed her Childers and Eclipses amongst the genus of unplumed 

 bipeds as well as amongst the irrational brutes. She has " favourites," 

 whose surpassing stretch no countervailing clog can adequately re- 

 press. To come plainly to my point: what does, or can, equalize 

 chances in love and war, between six feet of humanity and five? 

 Nothing: any more than the latter amount of sovereigns can be 

 made to discharge the obligations of the former. And who doubts 

 the correctness of Butler's " ancient sage philosopher," when he 



" swore the world as he could prove 



Was made of fighting and of love?" 



The heart-burning distinction is therefore one of lonely recurring 

 annoyance. It may be seen that the ancients have recorded their 

 sense of it in the proverb: " qui invidet minor est." If, in sooth, life 

 be, as our pastors say, a lottery, from which each mortal draws an 

 ordained number of blanks and prizes, he who obtains the gift of 

 towering, like Saul, above his fellows, banks a substantial thirty thou- 

 sand. Let him be content, though spindle-shanks and a lanthorn 

 visage should prove the (justly due) concomitants of his lot. Addi- 

 son, feigning the " Spectator/' reasons himself into good humour 

 with his brief allowance of face. He would never have succeeded 

 had the curtness applied to his entire " outward Adam." But now 

 to show how far these opinions have been justified in the purgatory 

 of personal experience. 



The biographies of great men usually prelude with a mass of 

 genealogical researches meritoriously intended to rebut any scandal- 

 ous notions flying abroad to the effect that their heroes were prodigies 

 of nature, as well as of talent, and born or begotten otherwise than 

 in common course. As I however am neither a great man, nor about 

 to indite a memoir, I hold myself excused from the necessity of sub- 

 stantiating the fact of actually having had a grandfather. Neverthe- 

 less, should what follows, from being couched in the first person, 

 excite curiosity on the subject, I pledge myself to supply the omis- 

 sion; and, as I hate half-proceedings, will then pursue my ancestry 

 up to the emigration of the Pygmei from Thrace. My distinguishing 

 or, rather my indistinguishing characteristic is alack of corporeal 



