Attic salt, the poet's salt—and he hit their tails
with such good aim that he caught them both—
I am bound to add not greatly struggling in
their captivity. When he had them they were
worth the holding; for they were love and fame;
two precious nightingales often singing in the
bush to less satisfying results than those which
came to Bounty when he set out upon the chase!

So it is difficult, is it not, to know which
path to choose and by what star to steer?
When the sun shines on those hedges round
about us, it makes them look all of emeralds
and flowers, and the birds within them seem so
near and their capture so certain, it would be
rank cowardice not to dash out and try. Such
a rich prize for such a small endeavour!—the
next thing to lying open-mouthed on one's back
and letting ripe cherries fall in of themselves.
That, blinding sunlight of Hope! how often it
fades and fails when the dark shadow of Ithuriel's
spear is thrown across its brightness! Sometimes,
indeed, it glows all the mightier for the
touch of that magic spear, but in most cases it
pales away to nothing, like a glow-worm in the
morning, or a watch-fire at noonday—a light
never to be rekindled either in this world or
the next.

In political life, the hand and the bush get
but cross-readings for the bush at times. Like
a man playing for high stakes, who refuses to
net his winnings on a low number, how often
does a politician set aside the lower class
honours within his grasp, while aiming at the
higher dignities which have the strongest arms
in Europe after them. And truly to one to
whom the Premiership is the two gold and silver
pheasants in the bush, the place of Governor
of Victoria, or of Inspector-General of Prisons,
is the wren not to be retained at any price.
When one has made oneself up for the Under-
Secretaryship, the office of Gentleman-at-Arms
is not such a very enticing lure; though to
many it would of course be the very acme of
success. That is as it should be. If it were
not for the steps, the whole theory of social life
would be at an end, and the counter would
stand as high as the woolsack and the clerk's
desk would be on a level with the throne. And
if it were not for the unsatisfied desires of
those who try for ortolans in foreign hedges,
the world would go on eating squab-pie made of
rooks shot on the premises, and be universally
Chinese, and stagnant. If we were all content
with our possessions, we might proclaim a
general strike of progress; so, though the
Two in the Bush are often mocking sinners
luring men into ditches and bogs and great
desolate plains, still they have their uses, and
the sons of men would be so much the poorer
by their absence. "Nothing venture, nothing
win;" that is the converse of the hand and the
bush. For as there is an intaglio to every
relievo, so is there a counter-weight and check-
string to every proverb; human circumstance
being too complex to admit of single lines, and
simplicity being known to Dresden shepherdesses
only. And then but a bad copy.

But to go back to politics.

Not only individual statesmen playing at loto
for portfolios and rooms in Downing-street, but
the people too, the mass of the populace, the
nation collectively, often loses its bird in the
hand by flinging up its cap at the two in the
bush. The small bit-by-bit reform that might
be had for the asking, and that would solder up
broken places, and make rotten corners sound,
and sweep out dusty rubbish bins, and do a deal
of useful mending and darning—bits of
amelioration ready to fall, like ripe pears, if only a
child or a summer zephyr shake the boughs—
are often postponed for the great radical changes,
the creations of new conditions, which are the
two divine possibilities in the bush. The
abolition of monarchy and the crown of state
melted down into porridge-pots; the House of
Lords made into a co-operative store, and the
peer's ermine exchanged for catskin; neither
army nor navy alive and astir, but only standing
factories and floating cotton-mills taking
the sea-breezes; this is what the madder kind
of people want; and any such pigmy steps as
improvements in schools, juster marriage laws,
a better manner of conveyance, well-arranged
friendly societies, and the recognition that a
man's soul is his own, and that he can carry it
into what temple seems to him most suitable
for his needs; all these, and thousands more
like to them, your so-called logical radical
reformer scouts as utterly unworthy his acceptance.
As wisely so a hungry man to whom you
offered beef and bacon, might shake his head,
and say No, Madras curry and Nesselrode
pudding; nothing less and nothing meaner!

Many other examples of the one in the hand
and the two in the bush, there are. The wisdom
or folly of making for the bush is according
generally to the amount of skill in our own right
arms, to the straightness of our eyes, the
strength of our biceps, and the accuracy with
which we can throw a stone or a casting net.
Unless we have all these qualifications, we had
best be content with what we have and make
the most of it, than lose our all in a madcap
chase after the unattainable and the impossible!

THE SPIRIT OF NELSON.

A LETTER has fallen in our way, in which a
very young officer in the Royal Navy, writing
from Malta, describes to his father the circumstances
of a recent melancholy accident which
cost the country the lives of twelve brave officers
and seamen belonging to H.M.S. Orlando. The
circumstances strike us as so very interesting,
simply related, and we have been so moved by the
heroic spirit of one "little midshipman"—whose
name we preserve, in the hope that this record
may one day be perused with pride by relatives of
the gallant boy—that we publish the account.

I have heard the particulars of that most
deplorable accident, and as I dare say you would
like to hear them too, I will tell you all that are