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��THE GRANITE MONTHLY.
��his eyes vacant and spiritless ; and his person clumsy and corpulent. Dr. Johnson was so awkward and ungainly in his manners, so ugly and repulsive in his looks, that he was sometimes mistaken for an idiot or madman. His immense bony structure and slov- enly dress made him a fit prototype of Dominie Sampson. They were both school- masters and both excel- lent men. Johnson, however, was less courteous than the Dominie. The Doctor and a clergyman by the name of Shebbeare were Ijiotk pensioned at one time. The report became cur- rent at once that the king had pen- sioned two bears — a he-bear and a she-bear. Wilkes, who was excessively ill-favored, used to say that, in the estimation of society, a handsome man had only half an hour's start of him, as,'- within that time, he would recover, by his conversation, what he had lost by his looks. On the other hand, a majestic form and courtly manners are sometimes strangely di- vorced from mind and heart. In a field of grain, the empty heads are usually the most erect and showy, while those that are heavy laden with precious fruit, seem, like true science, to withdraw their rich treasures from the public gaze. It is very easy to be deceived by appearances. There is a wide difference between an egg and and an egg-shell, though at a distance they look very much alike.
"Ne crede colon."
��If the language of expression were always intelligible, men might dispense with their grammars from Priscian to Lily and Murray, and talk with the features instead of the tongue, when they travel in foreign lands ; and it is very evident that this dumb eloquence might be carried to a high degree of perfection, from the proficiency made by deaf mutes, in the language of signs. " I have always had a firm be- lief," says Horace Smith, " that the celestials have no other medium of conversation ; but, that, carrying on a colloquy of glances, they avoid all
��wear and tear of lungs and all the vul- garity of human vociferation. Nay, we frequently do this ourselves. By a silent interchange of looks, when lis- tening to a third party, how completely may two people keep up a by-play of conversation and express their mutual incredulity, anger, disgust, contempt, amazement, grief, or languor. Speech is a laggard and a sloth, but the eyes shoot out an electric fluid that con- denses all the elements of sentiment and passion in one single emination." This silent interchange of thoughts and feelings, by those who are listen- ing to a public speaker, accounts for the fact that the same sentiments, uttered in the same language, will affect a large audience more power- fully than they would any one or two individuals of the same assembly lis- tening to the same speaker in private. It was said of the Athenians that they resembled sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a sin- gle one. The comparison would be still more striking with siuinc than sheep, as is admirably illustrated by Leigh Hunt, in his essay entitled, "The Graces and Anxieties of Pig- Driving." The owner had succeeded in working his ward, through the streets of Lon- don, almost to the shambles. " The animal was irritable, retrospective, picking objections, and prone to bog- gle, with a tendency to take every path but the proper one. He evi- dently possessed a peculiar turn of mind." When the driver's delicate and trying task was almost ended, the animal, as if suddenly struck with a presentiment of his fate, or as if he had forgotten some one lane which he had wished to enter, incontinently bolted — he was off. "Oh !" exclaimed the driver, smiting his head with his hand, in an agony of desperation ; "now he'll go up all manner of streets." A skillful swine-herd once remarked, that in order to form a taste for his business, "A man must chain his mind right down to it." This was sage counsel. It applies to the leading, training, and driving of bipids as well
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