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heap of stones by the roadside. And who, that had either heart or head, but would rather try to keep him up, than to take him further down? It is the delicate discernment of these things that marks the gentleman and the gentlewoman. Such instinctively shrink from saying or doing a thing that will pain the feelings of another: if they say or do anything of the kind, it is not because they don't know what they are about. While vulgar people go through life, unintentionally and ignorantly sticking pins into more sensitive natures at every turn. You, my friend, accidentally meet an old school companion. You think him a low looking fellow as could well be But you say to him kindly that you are happy to see him looking so well. He replies to you, with a confounded candour, 'I cannot say that of you; you are looking very old and careworn.' The boor did not mean to say anything disagreeable. It was pure want of discernment. It was simply that he is not a gentleman, and never can now be made one. "Your daughter, poor thing, is getting hardly any partners,' said a vulgar rich woman to an old lady in a ball-room: 'it is really very bad of the young men.' The vulgar rich woman fancied she was making a kind and sympathetic remark. It is to be recorded that sometimes such remarks have their origin not in ignorance but in intentional malignity. Mr. Snarling, of this neighbourhood, deals in such. He sees a man looking cheerful after dinner, and laughing heartily. Mr. Snarling exclaims, 'Bless me, how flushed you are getting! Did any of your relations die of apoplexy?' If you should cough in the unhappy wretch's presence, he will ask, with an anxious look, if there is consumption in your family. And he will receive your negative answer with an ominous shake of his head. 'I

am sorry to hear,' says Mr. Snarling, the week after your new horse comes home, 'I am sorry to hear about that animal proving such a bad bargain. I was sure the dealer would cheat you.' 'It was very sad indeed,' says Mr. Snarling, 'that you could not get that parish which you wanted.' He shakes his head, and kindly adds, ' Especially, as you were so very anxious to get it.' 'I read the December number of Fraser' (in which you have an article), says the fellow, and of all the contemptible rubbish that ever was printed, that was decidedly the worst.' You cannot refrain from the retort, Yes, it was very stupid of the editor to refuse that article you sent him: it would have raised the character of the magazine.' Snarling's face grows blue: he was not aware that you knew so much. Never mind poor Snarling: he punishes himself very severely. Only a man who is very unhappy himself will go about doing all he can to make others unhappy. And gradually Snarling is understood, and then Snarling is shunned.

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I trust that none of my readers have in them anything of the snarling spirit; but I doubt not that even the best-natured of them have occasionally met with human beings who were blown up with vanity and conceit to a degree so thoroughly intolerable, that it would have been felt as an unspeakable privilege to be permitted (so to speak) to stick a skewer into the great inflated wind-bag, and to take the individual several pegs down. It is fit and pleasing that a man in any walk of life should magnify his office, and be pleased with his own proficiency in its duties. One likes to see that. The man will be the happier, and will go through his work the better. But the irritating thing is to find a human being who will talk of nothing whatsoever except himself, and his own doings and importance; who plainly shows that he feels not the

least interest in any other topic of discourse; and who is ever trying to bring back the conversation to number one. I have at this moment in my mind's eye a man, a woman, and a lad, in each of whom conceit appears to a degree which I never saw paralleled elsewhere. When you look at or listen to any one of them, the analogy to the blownup bladder instantly suggests itself. They are very much alike in several respects. They are not ill-natured: though very commonplace, they are not utter blockheads: their great characteristic is self-complacency so stolid that it never will see reason to come down; and so pachydermatous that it will be unaware of any gentle effort to take it down. There is a beautiful equanimity about the thorough dunce. He is so completely stupid, that he never for an instant suspects that he is stupid at all. He never feels any necessity to intellectually come down. A clever man has many fears that his powers are but small, but your entire booby knows no such fear. The clever man can appreciate, when done by another, that which he could not have done himself: and he is able to make many comparisons which take him down. But there are men, who could read a sermon of their own, and then a sermon by the bishop of Oxford, and see no great difference between the two.

And now, kindly reader, we have arrived at the end of the six long slips of paper, and this essay approaches its close. Let me say, before laying down the pen, that it is for commonplace people I write, when I advise those who look at these pages to come down intellectually to the mark fixed for them by their fellow-creatures to believe that they are estimated pretty fairly, and appreciated much as they deserve. You and I, my friend, may possibly have fancied, once upon a time, that we were great and remarkable men; but many takings down have

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taught us to think soberly, and we know better now. shall never do anything very extraordinary: our biography will not be written after we are gone. So be it. Fiat Voluntas Tua! We are quite content to come down genially. It does not matter much that we never shall startle the world with the echoes of our fame. Let us rank ourselves with Nature's unambitious underwood, and flowers that prosper in the shade.' But, of course, there are great geniuses who ought not thus to come down· men who, though lightly esteemed by those around them, will some day take their place, by the consent of all enlightened judges, among the most illustrious of human kind. The very powers which are yet to make you famous, may tend to make the ignorant folk around you regard you as a crackbrained fool. You remember the beautiful fairy tale of the ugly duckling. The poor little thing was laughed at, pecked, and persecuted, because it was so different from the remainder of the brood, till it fled away in despair. But it was unappreciated, just because it was too good; for it grew up at length, and then met universal admiration: the ugly duckling was a beautiful swan! Even so that great man John Foster, preaching among a petty dissenting sect fifty years since, was set down as 6 a perfect fool.' But intelligent men have fixed his mark now. It was because he was a swan that the quacking tribe thought him such an ugly duck. You may be such another. The chance

is, indeed, ten thousand to one that you are not. Still, if you have the fixed consciousness of the divine gift within you, do not be false to your nature. Resolutely refuse to come down only be assured, my friend, that should such be your resolution, you will have to resist many temptations to give up!

CHAPTER XII.

CONCERNING THE DIGNITY OF DULNESS.

F any man wishes to write with vigour and decision upon one side of any debated question, it is highly expedient that he should write before he has thought much or long upon the debated question. For calmly to look at a subject in all its bearings, and dispassionately to weigh that which may be said pro and con., is destructive of that unhesitating conviction which takes its side and keeps it without a misgiving whether it be the right side, and which discerns in all that can be said by others, and in all that is suggested by one's own mind, only something to confirm the conclusion already arrived at. It must be often a very painful thing to have what may be termed a judicial mind-that is, a mind so entirely free from bias of its own, that in forming its opinion upon any subject, it is decided simply by the merits of the case as set before it; for the arguments on either side are sometimes all but exactly balanced. Yet it may be necessary to say yes to the one side and no to the other; it may be impossible to make a compromise-i. e., to say to both sides at once both yes and no. And if great issues depend upon the conclusion come to, a conscientious man may undergo an indescribable distraction and anguish before he concludes what to believe or to do. If a man be lord

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