LECTURE II. 



As we watch a clever juggler, exhibiting the magic-like 

 operations of his art, we become gradually quite lost in 

 amazement, until at last he elicits from us the expressions 

 of admiration which are the usual accompaniments and 

 reward of his success. But if we are then allowed to 

 walk on to his stage, in the strictest sense of the phrase 

 " to look at his cards/* how our amazement fades away 

 when we become aware of the complicated preparations 

 required, of the many aids which must be at hand, in a 

 word, of the various and abundant means he must make 

 use of, to bring about results which yet after all have no 

 relation to the means employed. And taking a wider 

 field, when we look around us on all the circumstances 

 of life, do not we soon find it 1 to be a characteristic 

 feature of the circumscribed position of Man, that his 

 boldest efforts attain, at last, to little or nothing, that 

 when he has availed himself of all the assistance talent 

 and favouring circumstances can afford, he must in the 

 end confess, that what he has obtained by all this toil 

 and labour, is but a small recompense for the outlay ? 



