DEVIATION FROM THE RIGHT COURSE. 99 



otherwise keeping it comfortable ; and when the 

 silly boy killed and opened the goose, and found the 

 germes of the eggs no bigger than grains of mustard- 

 seed, he was not only disappointed in his expecta- 

 tions, but he was deprived of those eggs which, if 

 he had waited, he would have got in the course 

 of nature. Just so, in every process, whether of 

 nature or of art, there is one succession of eventa 

 which leads to the proper result ; and if at any stage 

 of those events the least change be made, the result 

 will be changed, and the labour will fail and be use- 

 less. The nearer the beginning that the deviation 

 from the right course is, the farther are matters put 

 wrong. One-tenth part of an inch of error in the 

 levelling of a gun, may throw the bullet fifty yards 

 wide of its mark. One pace taken six inches longer 

 or shorter than, the one before it, will turn quite aside 

 and cause to lose his way, on a trackless moor and 

 enveloped hi fog, a man who started in the proper 

 direction to where he was going. Life is to us all 

 not unlike the moor in the fog, we must find our 

 way much more by that which is in us than from 

 external things ; and if we are heedless of steps, 

 we never can get straight on to our purpose, but will 

 often wander so obliquely as, without being at all 

 aware of it, to turn completely round, and end 

 where we began. That is the case with those who 

 go occasionally to the foggy and pathless moors. 

 They set out from the cottage on the one side in 

 exactly the proper direction, but as they have been 

 accustomed to follow beaten tracks to be mere copy- 

 ists of others, they deviate without knowing it, and 

 very often night brings them back hungry and ex- 

 hausted, though all the time they have a firm belief 

 that they are going in the direction of that place on 

 the opposite side, which they ought to have reached 

 before mid-day. Indeed, to those who do not take 

 heed how they walk, sunshine and surrounding ob- 

 jects are not to be depended on, because, tn places 



