Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 3).pdf/104

 their brains without ever getting to their journies end;—some falling with their noses perpendicularly into stinks,—others horizontally with their tails into kennels. Here one half of a learned profession tilting full butt against the other half of it, and then tumbling and rolling one over the other in the dirt like hogs.—Here the brethren, of another profession, who should have run in opposition to each other, flying on the contrary like a flock of wild geese, all in a row the same way.—What confusion!—what mistakes!—fiddlers and painters judging by their eyes and ears,—admirable!—trusting to the passions excited in an air sung, or a story painted to the heart,—instead of measuring them by a quadrant.

In the foreground of this picture, a statesman turning the political wheel, like