LITTLE MEN.

Manawatu Times, Volume II, Issue 31, 3 February 1877, Page 3

LITTLE MEN.

Not long before his death Canon Kingsley drew attention to the surprising number of small young men to be seen m an English crowd. According to him it was a sign of the deterioration of the race. But there are two ways of looking at everything, and, for the comfort and satisfaction of small people, we would point out that it might almost be taken as an indication of intellectual progress. Many — we might almost say most — of the great men of history have been men of short stature, from the days of that ancient philosopher who, as the story goes, was so diminutive that he had to carry lead m his pockets to prevent his being blown away, Canute the Great, for example, was a singularly small man ; Napoleon, too, was little ; Nelson had no height to boast of; and the great Conde was short enough. Hildebrand — Gregory the Seventh — the mightiest of all the Popes, was also quite a diminutive person. Then amongst men of letters, poets, and philosophers, Montaigne, the essayist, was little ; so was Pope —"a little crooked thing that asks questions ; " so was Dryden ; so was Dr Watts, who insisted, as we all know, on the mind being the stature of the man ; and so was Searron, who, alluding at once to. his ill-health, and his little size, called himself an "abridgement of human miseries." Will any one, after such names as these — and the list might be indefinitely extended — look downy on little men with disdain ? '**<*