"All men have in them the sentiments of
compassion and sympathy. In a crowd that
should see a child falling into a well, there
would not be one who would not feel fear and
pity."

"Nothing is nobler than to afford to others
the means of exercising their virtues."

"Markets were established to enable men to
exchange what they possessed for what they did
not possess. He was a worthless man who first
levied taxes upon this interchange."

HOBBY-HORSES.

Is there any one among us who does not keep
a hobby-horse?—to whom the pleasure of parading
a favourite toy, material or intellectual, is
unknown? If there is I should like to see the
man, as a curiosity not equalled even by a living
specimen of the dodo, or a yearling ichthyosaurus
making its first clumsy essays towards
amphibious perfection. But I do not believe in
him, and will not allow that a being absolutely
hobby-horseless exists; hat there lives the man
or woman whose days pass away without the
indulgence of a toy, or the dandling of a doll.
No, we may be sure that, whether we confess
it or deny it, we all have our particular beast
at home, our dapple or our roan, our black, our
chesnut, our mouse-colour, or our bay, capering
somewhere about the establishment, though we
all choose different keeping-places, and have
idiosyncrasies in the matter of airing-grounds.
Some of us, for instance, keep our hobby-horse
under lock and key, in the closet opposite to
that wherein the family skeleton lives, taking
him out to air occasionally—privately and
surreptitiously as it were—and under close disguise,
so that he may pass for a dog or a sheep,
perhaps for a wolf or a lion; for something
useful and to be encouraged, or for something
dangerous and to be put down; but in no wise
to be discovered as a hobby-horse with two
false legs and a ewe neck stuffed artistically,
good only as a plaything and pastime. Others,
on the contrary, have him in the court-yard,
caracolling about the premises without the least
attempt at concealment; the first thing seen
by a stranger, the last by a guest; the whole
domain given up to hobby-horsemanship, and
the whole world his pasture-ground. And
others again show him warily to private friends;
just the tip of his nose snuffing the morning
air, or the end of his tail whisking off the flies
from his housings; but honestly, if warily,
confessing him for what he is, and not masking him
in pasteboard vizors sheepish or leonine, and
making believe that his entertainment means
sacrifice or crusade for the world at large. This
kind air him in home-paddocks well defended,
with only a chosen few to see the fun, and cry
bravo! at the proper moment. Too honest to
deny that their hobby is just a hobby and nothing
more, they yet are sensitive as to the ridicule
the poor beast may get;  and so they keep him
to close quarters and private airing-grounds, and
put plenty of water into his soup. But whether
close or open, confessed or denied, walled
paddocks or public thoroughfares, we all do keep
a hobby-horse if not horses, and all do feel
supreme delight when we get inside the
trappings, and display our horsemanship to friends
and not impartial judges.

One of the most charming bits of hobby-
horsemanship on record was that of my Uncle
Toby and Corporal Trim, when they besieged
forts and cities in the back garden, and fought
out extinct battles, with different issues, on the
tablecloth. They were of the class which keeps
its hobby-horses undisguised, and is not ashamed
of its stable—is indeed rather proud of it than
otherwise, and gently solicitous for all friends
to witness the dexterity of its manège, and the
ease with which it can take flying leaps and
clear all manner of five-barred gates. The world
would be somewhat the gainer if all hobby-
horses were of the same innocency of
complexion as that of my Uncle Toby and
Corporal Trim, and if nothing more vicious or
aggressive ever stood on its hind legs and made
snaps at the passers-by.

Louis the Sixteenth, of France—luckless
Louis!—had his hobby-horse stalled in a
blacksmith's shop, and was never so happy as when
filing at locks and keys, and dabbling his royal
fingers in sweet-oil and blacklead; while Danton
and Robespierre, Marat and Saint-Just, were
sketching out their grim hobby in garrets and
court-yards, in a short time to hammer him out
of the wood and iron of the guillotine, cemented
with the tears and blood of the best in France.
Charles the Fifth of Spain had his swinging to
innumerable pendulums—trying to make timepieces
synchronous, with the distracting results
usually allotted to the would-be regulators of
circumstance and the meddlers with
undiscovered laws. And all through history we find
the footprints of various hobbies which the
great ones of the earth bestrode and made to
dance upon high places. Sometimes they were of
rather fiercer aspect and rougher manners than
was quite agreeable to the beholders; as Nero's
for one example; Procrustes' for another;
Gessler's hobby done up in an old hat for a
third; the Duke d'Alva, bestriding one cut out
of the same block as Charles the Fifth's but
with different garniture and bloodier pasturage,
trying to make souls uniform instead of timepieces
synchronous, for a fourth; while Catherine
de Médicis, the Marchioness de Brinvilliers,
the Borgias, and the Thugs, are a quartet taken
at random from among the thick-coming memories
of hobby-horses historical. Our own "farmer
George" had one of a peaceful and bucolic
order; which is more than can be said of the
hobbies owned by Carlyle's favourite Fritz and
Fritz's papa, by that slovenly old witch-finder
King James, by Tippoo Sahib, or, in later days,
by the Nana. But the Eastern hobbies
generally are of the tigerish order; though it is not
for us to cast stones at our neighbour's stable
windows, when our own reveal such ugly brutes