powers of chemistry to bear, in some terrific
way, against the public enemy. I have heard
him, at a dinner-party, argue very well to
prove that if we can send messages by lightning
from one part of the world to another,
there is no reason why we should not be
able, in a few years, by a new arrangement
of electric wires, to send a complete thunderstorm
to any part of Europe. Already he is
sure that if he had wire enough provided him
by government, to reach from Crotchet Place
to St. Petersburgh, that if the Czar would only
stand on a glass stool, at the other end, and
put his head near to a jar provided for the
purpose, he could sit in his own parlour
and destroy the tyrant. He believes that a
Powder Plot could easily be organised by the
secret addition of a few branches to the existing
wires of the electric telegraph, which he
would have carried by some conspirators
residing in the Russian capital, by secret
passages, into a barrel of gunpowder, placed
under the imperial throne. The Czar might
then at any time be blown up in the presence
of his court and people. Our neighbour
grants us, however, that these are crotchets
upon which — as there are difficulties in the
way of their satisfaction — he is not so unpractical
as to dwell. What he thinks can be
done, and what he is endeavouring to find
out the right way of doing, is one of those
simple things about which everybody when
he hears of it wonders that it had not long
since occurred to himself. It is the scuttling
of Cronstadt and destruction of St. Petersburgh,
by means of an artificial earthquake.
He is always trying to make earthquakes,
and that is his hobby. Before poor Cocking
fell a victim to his hobby, that parachutes
ought to be built bottom upwards, he satisfied
his mind by witnessing the descent of a model
of his model — something smaller than a lady's
bonnet — from the top of the Monument.
P. B. produces model earthquakes on a
larger scale. He has removed his servants'
beds into the back drawing-room and parlour,
and has filled the whole range of his attics
with a bed of earth. Earthquakes on the
ground-floor, still more at the basement,
would be liable to bring the house about his
ears. Up-stairs, he can make them in
comparative security. His design is, when the
recipe is found, to send out the ingredients
for a large earthquake by the Baltic fleet.
He means to present his secret to the country,
and charge only cost price for his chemicals.

But, it will be asked, what do I make of
this man Bomb for the advantage of my
theory? A despicable fellow, who preys on
the ruin of his neighbours, and whose hobby
is to discover how he may achieve a ruin on
the largest scale. So far as he goes, I say,
my case is proved by him. He has no sign
of a moral nature, and his intellectual
employments, apart from the chemical researches,
are all of the very basest.  His hobby alone,
though utterly absurd in itself, saves him
from contempt. In obedience to that, he has
laboured to cultivate his stupid brain ; has
read volumes of physical geography and
experimental science ; has dipped for
earthquakes into books of travel. If he knows
anything worth knowing, it is to his hobby
that he owes his information. This is the
real source of what little respect he earns for
himself fairly in society.

Now let me take a much less extreme case.
At number eleven Crotchet Place — the large
centre house — the tenant is a wealthy city
merchant. He is a man of the kindliest
disposition, but hopelessly obstinate, and full
of prejudices of all sorts. He is quick at
wrath, and though the passion is soon over,
he punctually does, when of his usual mind,
whatever he may have threatened to do when
beside himself. He disinherited, upon a point
of prejudice, his only son in favour of a young
nephew Tom, who, as a favourite of Mrs.
Stickleback's, has spent many a week with
us. "I hate going to Uncle Timothy's," Tom
used to say, "though he expects me every
other Sunday, and gives famous dinners, and
don't mind my liking three glasses of wine.
I hate his garden, and I hate his pigs, and I
hate his rabbits, and I wish he had been
black-balled when he was put up for master
by the Dollmakers' Company." The fact is,
that the hobby of Mr. Timothy Branbody—
he is a wholesale toyman —is his garden. I
believe it to be a fact — and if a fact, it is a
very curious one — that, as every man's hobby
stands in some relation to his temper, the
hobby of an obstinate man, who is, at the
same time, amiably disposed, is gardening;
and that if he be also passionate, the said
hobby commonly includes poultry, rabbits, or
some such domesticated creatures. Let the
caviller against this theory take notice for
himself. I am an old man now, and I have
devoted myself to the investigation of this
subject from my childhood up. Let me have
an opinion. The phenomenon is to be
accounted for in this way. To be obstinate, is
to be determined to do as one likes; now, in
a man's garden, he has only submissive
material to work upon. If he object to weeds,
they come out at his pull; if he must say to
a tree, You shall not have that branch, he
has only to take a saw or pruning-knife,
and cut it away. Nothing resists:
everywhere he has his will, and (what
especially makes gardens dear to obstinate
men who are kind-hearted) he can fill his
day with acts of despotism, and yet go to
bed knowing that he has inflicted upon
nothing hurt or pain with the reproach of
which there comes a wound upon his feelings
or his conscience. As to the other part of
the case, if it be a truth, as I take it to be,
that the passionate but amiable man is apt to
include some domesticated animals among
his hobbies, it may be that the temper which
so constantly provokes the hot blood of other
people into conflict takes pleasure in encountering