RULE XVI. DUODECIMALS; OR, THE MEASURING OF PAINTING, PLASTERING, JOINING, GLAZING, GLOZING, AND OTHER FLAT WORK.

Duodecimals teach us to find the superficial contents of any "thing." A thing is properly something, neither woman nor man; possessing all the superficial of either, and the substantials of neither: such as numbsculls, lordlings, quacks, empirics, &c.

Duodecimals also teach the mensuration of plastering, painting and glazing; which comprehend the arts of palaver and gammon, and the science of Flattery in general.

This is, above all others, a "superficial age," and the mensuration of superficies is characteristic of the modern era—the age of meretricious flummery. Our science is superficial thinking; our morality, superficial blinking. Every thing is made now-a-days for the "surface," which, like the gilded wooden organ pipes, placed in front of that instrument, are not made to blow, but for the sake of show. In learning, we get a smattering instead of the real thing; and we drop the meat for the sake of the shadow. The deep and the solid have long ago been discarded: in short, this is the age of gammon, and society is like a quire of "outsides foolscap."

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Of Flat Surfaces.—A plane or flat surface has length and breadth without thickness. Flat surfaces are often made, by some peculiar property of polarized light, to reflect rays which do not belong to them. Thus, flats pass for solids, and "shallows" for "deep-uns."

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