'I'll make it clear to you! Suppose a number of gold-fishes in a glass bowl—you understand? Well! I come with my cigar, and go puff, puff, puff, over the bowl, until there is a little cloud of smoke: now, tell me, what will the gold-fishes say to that?' 'I should imagine,' said I, 'that they would not know what to make of it.' 'By Jove! you're a Kantian;' said he, and with this and the like, he left me, vowing that it was delightful to talk to so intelligent a person. The greatest compliment Wirgman ever received was from James Mill, who used to say he did not understand Kant. That such a man as Mill should think this worth saying is a feather in the cap of the jocose jeweller.
Some of my readers will stare at my supposing that Boswell may have been the first down-bringer of the word principles into common life; the best answer will be a prior instance of the word as true vernacular; it has never happened to me to notice one. Many words have very common uses which are not old. Take the following from Nichols (Anecd. ix. 263): 'Lord Thurlow presents his best respects to Mr. and Mrs. Thicknesse, and assures them that he knows of no cause to complain of any part of Mr. Thicknesse's carriage; least of all the circumstance of sending the head to Ormond Street.' Surely Mr. T. had lent Lord T. a satisfactory carriage with a moveable head, and the above is a polite answer to inquiries. Not a bit of it! carriage is here conduct, and the head is a bust. The vehicles of the rich, at the time, were coaches, chariots, chaises, &c., never carriages, which were rather carts. Gibbon has the word for baggage-waggons. In Jane Austen's novels the word carriage is established.
John Walsh, of Cork (1786–1847).—This discoverer has had the honour of a biography from Prof. Boole, who, at my request, collected information about him on the scene of his labours. It is in the Philosophical Magazine for November, 1851, and will, I hope, be transferred to some biographical collection where it may find a larger class of readers. It is the best biography of a single hero of the kind that I know. Mr. Walsh introduced himself to me, as he did to many others, in the anterowlandian days of the Post-office; his unpaid letters were double, treble, &c. They contained his pamphlets, and cost their weight in silver: all have the name of the author, and all are in octavo or in quarto letter-form: most are in four pages, and all dated from Cork. I have the following by me:—
