neighbors are as bad off as ourselves.' On the con

trary, I subscribe myself,

"With hearty condolence,

"Your sympathizing friend,

"OLDHAM."

"But, husband, you don't mean that your friend Langdon is not deserving of his title ?"

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No, my dear, he is an abler man, and a better theologian, than nine-tenths of those that have it. But our whole system of academic degrees is an absurd farce. The degrees in the arts are conferred in course on young men, four-fifths of whom would find it hard to stand a strict examination upon the latinity of their diplomas. And as to the honorary degrees, they are no honor at all. Popular city preachers, or ministers of important parishes, are made D. D.'s, who could not, for their lives, give a clear and accurate statement of the doctrines and logical connection of the doctrines of a single theological system, still less a just, comparative and critical exposition of the differences and agreements of the different systems, and, least of all, of the principles that underlie and determine their systematic relations; while LL. D.'s light on the surprised heads of men who know no more of Civil, or

of Canon law, or of the difference between them, than Field Marshal Wellington and Marshal Blucher ell-ell-deed at Oxford, or General Jackson and General Taylor ell-ell-deed by our own University of Cambridge."

"What are these degrees worth, then, husband ?"

"Nothing at all, my dear, and never will be, until they are given only when well-earned."

CHAPTER XXIV.

TWEEDLEDUM AND TWEEDLEDEE.

66 Ан, my son," said the Doctor one day, talking to Phil, "get the habit of always discerning the distinct in the inseparable. There are some persons that are forever confounding them. They cannot distinguish between things that always go together, especially if they are at all blended or lie very close to each other."

"But there is another class of persons," said Phil, "that are forever puzzling a plain question, or avoiding the force of a just argument, by distinctions without a difference-mere tweedledum and tweedledee."

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'Ah, Phil, rail not at the distinction between tweedledum and tweedledee-for there is a real difference between them, and often a momentous

difference.

Beware how

Beware how you think contemptuously of it. No matter how slight it may seem, it may be of infinite consequence. The angle where two straight lines meet, may be infinitesimally small, but produce the lines and they become heaven-wide apart. It is a difference on which the dearest interests of truth and human welfare may turn. It has often convulsed the world of thought and of action. The profoundest agitations-religious and political-which history records, have sprung from it. Humanity is not thus moved for nothing. I have a great respect for the difference between tweedledum and tweedledee.

"But I have no respect for the difference between tweedledum and tweedledum; and that is a distinction some persons-I grant you, Phil-lay great stress upon, and are always parading, to the great detriment of all rational argumentation."

66

They have a notion they evince superior logical acuteness," said Phil.

"Logic," said the Doctor, "is a very good thing for a good thinker, but a very bad thing for one who is not. There's Mr. Grim-he is intensely

logical, but his

logic only serves to illustrate the poorness of his thought. A man must be able at

times to get above his logic, or below it-which

ever you choose-in order to use it to any very good purpose."

"But logic is thinking, is it not?" said Phil.

"Yes," replied the Doctor, "but not all thinking. There is other thinking besides logical. There is thinking-and of the highest sort-which is the very reverse of the logical, which sees and seizes by immediate intuition, without any process of deduction, great truths, that logic never gives-all the primary principles of mathematics, metaphysics, and morals-truths that are true because they are true, and not because something else is true from which their truth flows-truths of the highest importance in themselves, and indispensable also for the uses of logic.

66

'Logic, my son, is of great use to those who have good sense and discretion, and know how to use it at proper times and in a proper way. But I reckon among the greatest social pests, those persons who are for having an argument on every thing that comes up, though it be a matter of fact as palpable as the nose on your face; who are not content to believe that a horse has four legs, without a syllogism running round in an edifying circle to prove it: quadrupeds have four legs; horses are quadrupeds; therefore horses have four legs; and