On account of a few variations, scholars have composed
what they call Harmonies of the Gospels; but how much harder it would be
for any one of us to harmonize his talk on any subject moving the minds
of men! Where strong self-interest acts, we can explain changes and
inconsistencies in the great organs set up to operate on public
sentiment. Such a paper as the London "Times," having nothing higher
than avaricious commerce and national pride to consult, in a conspicuous
centre of affairs has thus become the great weathercock of the world,
splendidly gilded, lifted very high in the air, but, like some other
stupid chanticleers, crowing at false signals of the dawn, and well
called the "Times," as in its columns nothing eternal was ever evinced.
Everywhere exist these agents of custom and convention, wielded by a
power behind them, and holding long no one direction, but varying in
every wind. Some breeze of general policy, however, prescribes the law
of these alterations, while only a weak and brainless sensibility,
blowing from every source, commonly occasions the continual veering of
our private word. Through what manifold phases _a good conversationist_
has dexterity to pass! Quarterings of the uncertain moon, the lights
that glance blue, silver, yellow, and green from the shifting angles of
the gems that move with their wearers, or the confused motions of some
of our inferior fellow-creatures that flutter from side to side of the
road as intimidating objects fail on the eyes planted on opposite sides
of their heads, feebly symbolize these human displays of unstable
equilibrium.
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