With us, you see, the case is quite different: --we are all ups and downs in this matter; --you are a great genius; --or 'tis fifty to one, Sir, you are a great dunce and a blockhead; --not that there is a total want of intermediate steps, --no, --we are not so irregular as that comes to; --but the two extremes are more common, and in a greater degree in this unsettled island, where nature, in her gifts and dispositions of this kind, is most whimsical and capricious; fortune herself not being more so in the bequest of her goods and chattels than she.

With us, you see, the case is quite different: - we are all ups and downs; you are a great genius; - or 'tis fifty to one, Sir, you are a great dunce and a blockhead. Not that there is a total lack of steps in between; - but the two extremes are more common in this unsettled island, where nature is whimsical and capricious in her gifts.
