One great difficulty of natural historians is to classify the subject of their labours on any satisfactory principles; and in endeavouring to depict, however slightly, the great genus Don, I find myself somewhat perplexed to arrange it in systematic order. As, however, it is not my purpose to attempt an exhaustive account of its peculiarities, I will content myself with one very simple but important distinction.

Mankind may be roughly divided here, as elsewhere, into the useful and the ornamental; it is our particular happiness that, although we have some who are included under both these heads, there are none who do not fall under one of them. Those who are of no assignable use whatever are of so highly ornamental a character, that I almost feel disposed to worship them. My state of mind in regard to a Master resembles that of a small boy of my acquaintance, in whose family lived a gorgeous coachman of noble appearance, and distinguished by one of those wigs which suggested to Sydney Smith, “a boundless convexity of frizz:” the boy was one night seen on his knees and overheard to pray, “Good Mr. Brown, watch over us this night!” When I was a small boy myself, it used to be pointed out to me that there was a kind of providential arrangement about these matters: the humble hen and the domestic sheep were plain, not to say ugly; whereas the vain peacock and mischievous tiger possessed a singular beauty.