Peter's at Rome) that when he first entered it, he was rather awe-struck, but that as he walked up it, his mind seemed to swell and dilate with it, and at last to fill the whole building—the other said that as he saw more of it, he appeared to himself to grow less and less every step he took, and in the end to dwindle into nothing. This was in some respects a striking picture of a great and little mind—for greatness sympathises with greatness, and littleness shrinks into itself. The one might have become a Wolsey; the other was only fit to become a Mendicant Friar—or there might have been court-reasons for making him a bishop. The French have to me a character of littleness in all about them; but they have produced three great men that belong to every country, Moliere, Rabelais, and Montaigne.
To return from this digression, and conclude the Essay. A singular instance of manual dexterity was shewn in the person of the late John Cavanaugh, whom I have several times seen. His death was celebrated at the time in an article in the Examiner newspaper, (Feb. 7, 1819) written apparently between jest and earnest; but as it is pat to our purpose, and falls in with my own way of considering such subjects, I shall here take leave to quote it.
