much lessened when they go far away from home, and spend a little time among strange scenes and people. For, going thus away from home, you take only yourself. It is but a small part of your extension that goes. You go; but you leave behind your house, your study, your children, your servants, your horses, your garden. And not only do you leave them behind, but they grow misty and unsubstantial when you are far away from them. And somehow you feel that when you make the acquaintance of a new friend some hundreds of miles off, who never saw your home and your family, you present yourself before him, only a twentieth part or so of what you feel yourself to be when you have all your belongings about you. Do you not feel all that? And do you not feel, that if you were to go away to Australia forever, almost as the English coast turned blue and then invisible on the horizon, your life in England would first turn cloudlike, and then melt away?

were just now to die. There are those who" seen yourself as others see you." And must rise with you if you rise, and sink with even to do so physically, is a step towards a you if you sink. Does it sometimes suddenly juster and humbler estimate of yourself in strike you, what a little object you are to more important things. It may here be have so much depending on you? Vaguely, said as a further illustration of the principle in your thinking and feeling, you add your set forth, that people who stay very much at circumstances and your lot to your person-home, feel their stature, bodily and mental, ality; and these make up an object of considerable extension. You do so with other people as well as with yourself. You have all their belongings as a background to the picture of them which you have in your mind; and they look very little when you see them in fact, because you see them without these belongings. I remember when a boy, how disappointed I was at first seeing the Archbisop of Canterbury. It was Archbishop Howley. There he was, a slender pale old gentleman, sitting in an arm-chair at a public meeting. I was chiefly disappointed, because there was so little of him. There was just the human being. There was no background of grand accessories. The idea of the Primate of England which I had in some confused manner in my mind, included a vision of the venerable towers of Lambeth,―of a long array of solemn predecessors, from Thomas A'Becket downwards -of great historical occasions on which the Archbishop of Canterbury had been a prominent figure; and in some way I fancied, But without further discussing the philosvaguely, that you would see the primate sur-ophy of how it comes to be, I return to the rounded by all these things. You remem- statement that you yourself, as you live in ber the highlander in Waverley who was your home, are to yourself the centre of this much mortified when his chief came to meet world; and that you feel the force of any an English guest, unattended by any retinue; great principle most deeply, when you feel and who exclaimed in consternation and it in your own case. And though every "He has come without his tail!" worthy mortal must be often taken out of Even such was my early feeling. You un- himself, especially by seeing the deep sorderstand, later, that associations are not vis- rows and great failures of other men, still, ible; and that they do not add to a man's in thinking of people of whom more might extension in space. But (to go back) you have been made, it touches you most to disdo, as regards yourself, what you do as re-cern that you are one of these. It is a very gards greater men; you add your lot to your personality, and thus you make up a bigger object. And when you see yourself in your tailor's shop, in a large mirror (one of a series) wherein you see your figure all round, reflected several times, your feeling will probably be, what a little thing you are! If you are a wise man, you will go away somewhat humbled, and possibly somewhat the better for the sight. You have, to a certain extent, done what Burns thought it would do all men much good to do; you have

sorrow,

sad thing to think of yourself, and to see how much more might have been made of you. Sit down by the fire in winter; or go out now in summer and sit down under a tree; and look back on the moral discipline you have gone through; look back on what you have done and suffered. Oh, how much better and happier you might have been! And how very near you have often been to what would have made you so much happier and better! If you had taken the other turning when you took the wrong one, after

therewith

much perplexity; if you had refrained from learned, in whatsoever state I am, saying such a hasty word; if you had not to be content!" thoughtlessly made such a man your enemy! Such a little thing may have changed the You see, reader, that in thinking of Peoentire complexion of your life. Ah, it was ple of whom more might have been made, we because the points were turned the wrong are limiting the scope of the subject. I am way at that jnnction, that you are now run- not thinking how more might have been ning along a line of railway through wild made of us originally. No doubt the potter moorlands, leaving the warm champaign be- had power over the clay. Give a larger low ever more hopelessly behind. Hastily, brain, of finer quality, and the commonplace or pettedly, or despairingly, you took the man might have been a Milton. A little wrong turning; or you might have been change in the chemical composition of the dwelling now amid verdant fields and silver gray matter of that little organ which is waters in the country of contentment and unquestionably connected with the mind's success. Many men and women, in the tem-working as no other organ of the body is, porary bitterness of some disappointment, and oh, what a different order of thought have hastily made marriages which will em- would have rolled off from your pen when bitter all their future life; or which at least you sat down and tried to write your best? make it certain that in this world they will If we are to believe Robert Burns, some peonever know a joyous heart any more. Men ple have been made more of than was origihave died as almost briefless barristers, toil-nally intended. A certain poem records how ing into old age in heartless wrangling, who that which, in his homely phrase, he calls had their chance of high places on the bench; "stuff to mak' a swine," was ultimately conbut ambitiously resolved to wait for some-verted into a very poor specimen of a human thing higher; and so missed the tide. Men being. The poet had no irreverent intenin the Church have taken the wrong path at tion, I dare say; but I am not about to go some critical time; and doomed themselves into the field of speculation which is opened to all the pangs of disappointed ambition. up by his words. I know indeed that in the But I think a sincere man in the Church has hands of the Creator each of us might have a great advantage over almost all ordinary been made a different man. The pounds of disappointed men. He has less temptation, material which were fashioned into Shaksreading affairs by the light of after time, to peare might have made a bumpkin with little look back with bitterness on any mistake he thought beyond pigs and turnips; or, by may have made. For if he be the man I some slight difference beyond man's skill to mean, he took the decisive step not without trace, might have made an idiot. A little seeking the best of guidance; and the whole infusion of energy into the mental contraining of his mind has fitted him for see- stitution might have made the mild, pensive ing a higher hand in the allotment of human day-dreamer who is wandering listlessly by conditions. And if a man acted for the best, the river-side, sometimes chancing upon noaccording to the light he had, and if he ble thoughts, which he does not carry out truly believes that God puts all in their into action, and does not even write down places in life, he may look back without on paper, into an active worker, with Arbitterness upon what may appear the most nold's keen look, who would have carved grievous mistakes. I must be suffered to out a great career for himself, and exercised add, that if he is able heartily to hold cer- a real influence over the views and conduct tain great truths, and to rest on certain sure of numbers of other men. A very little promises, hardly any conceivable earthly lot alteration in feature might have made a plain should stamp him a soured or disappointed face into a beautiful one, and some slight man. If it be a sober truth, that "all things change in the position or the contractibility shall work together for good" to a certain of certain of the muscles might have made order of mankind; and if the deepest sor- the most awkward of manners and gaits into rows in this world may serve to prepare us the most dignified and graceful. All that we for a better; why, then, I think that one all understand. But my present subject is might hold by a certain ancient philosopher the making which is in circumstances after (and something more), who said "I have our natural disposition is fixed-the train

ing, coming from a hundred quarters, which | sential difference between men ; for truly the forms the material supplied by nature into difference in their positions is often so trethe character which each of us actually bears. mendous that it is painful to think that it And, setting apart the case of great genius, is the self-same clay and the self-same comwhose bent towards the thing in which it will mon mind that are promoted to dignity and excel is so strong that it will find its own field degraded to servitude. And if you someby inevitable selection, and whose strength times feel that, you in whose favor the aris such that no unfavorable circumstances rangement tends, what do you suppose your can hold it down, almost any ordinary hu- servants sometimes think upon the subject? man being may be formed into almost any It was no wonder that the millions of Russia development. I know a huge massive beam were ready to grovel before their Czar, while of rough iron, which supports a great weight. they believed that he was "an emanation Whenever I pass it, I cannot help giving it from the Deity." But in countries where it a pat with my hand, and saying to it, "You is quite understood that every man is just as might have been hair-springs for watches." much an emanation from the Deity as any I know an odd-looking little man attached other, you will not long have that sort of to a certain railway-station, whose business thing. You remember Goldsmith's noble it is when a train comes in to go round it lines, which Dr. Johnson never could read with a large box of a yellow concoction, and without tears, concerning the English charsupply grease to the wheels. I have often acter. Is it not true that it is just because looked out of the carriage-window at that the humble but intelligent Englishman unodd little man, and thought to myself, derstands distinctly that we are all of us "Now you might have been a chief justice." People of whom more might have been made, And indeed I can say from personal observa- that he has "learnt to venerate himself as tion, that the stuff ultimately converted into man!" And, thinking of influences which cabinet ministers does not at an early stage form the character, there is a sad reflection at all appreciably differ from that which which has often occurred to me. It is, that never becomes more than country parsons. circumstances often develop a character There is a great gulf between the human which it is hard to contemplate without being who gratefully receives a shilling, and anger and disgust. And yet in many such touches his cap as he receives it, and the cases it is rather pity that is due. The more human being whose income is paid in yearly disgusting the character formed in some or half-yearly sums, and to whom a pecun- men, the more you should pity them. Yet iary tip would appear as an insult; yet of it is hard to do that. You easily pity the course that great gulf is the result of train- man whom circumstances have made poor ing alone. John Smith the laborer, with and miserable; how much more you should twelve shillings a week, and the bishop with pity the man whom circumstances have made eight thousand a year, had, by original con- bad. You pity the man from whom some stitution, precisely the same kind of feeling terrible accident has taken a limb or a hand; towards that much-sought yet much-abused but how much more should you pity the man reality which provides the means of life. from whom the influences of years have Who shall reckon up by what millions of taken a conscience and a heart! And someslight touches from the hand of circum- thing is to be said for even the most unstance, extending over many years, the one amiable and worst of the race. No doubt man is gradually formed into the giving of it is mainly their own fault that they are so the shilling, and the other man into the re- bad; but still it is hard work to be always ceiving of it with that touch of his hat? rowing against wind and tide, and some Who shall read back the forming influences people could be good only by doing that at work since the days in the cradle, that ceaselessly. I am not thinking now of pigradually formed one man into sitting down rates and pickpockets. But take the case to dinner, and another man into waiting be- of a sour, backbiting, malicious, wronghind his chair? I think it would be occa- headed, lying old woman, who gives her life sionally a comfort if one could believe, as to saying disagreeable things and making American planters profess to believe about mischief between friends. There are not their slaves, that there is an original and es- many mortals with whom one is less disposed

1

intellectual and moral perversion the human mind readily yields itself to be modified.

to have patience. But yet, if you knew all, you would not be so severe in what you think and say of her. You do not know the phys"I compassionate you, would, in a very ical irritability of nerve and weakness of benevolent hour, be your language to the constitution which that poor creature may wealthy, unfeeling tyrant of a family and a have inherited; you do not know the singu- neighborhood, who seeks in the overawed lar twist of mind which she may have got timidity and unretaliated injuries of the unfrom nature and from bad and unkind treat- fortunate beings within his power, the gratiment in youth; you do not know the bitter-fication that should have been sought in their ness of heart she has felt at the polite snubbings and ladylike tortures which in excellent society are often the share of the poor and the dependent. If you knew all these things, you would bear more patiently with my friend Miss Limejuice; though I confess that sometimes you would find it uncommonly hard to do so.

As I wrote that last paragraph, I began dimly to fancy that somewhere I had seen the idea which is its subject treated by an abler hand by far than mine. The idea, you may be sure, was not suggested to me by books, but by what I have seen of men and women. But it is a pleasent thing to find that a thought which at the time is strongly impressing one's self, has impressed other men. And a modest person, who knows very nearly what his humble mark is, will be quite pleased to find that another man has not only anticipated his thoughts, but has expressed them much better than he could have done. Yes, let me turn to that incomparable essay of John Foster, On a Man's writing Memoirs of Himself. it is:

Here

"Make the supposition that any given number of persons, a hundred, for instance, taken promiscuously, should be able to write memoirs of themselves so clear and perfect as to explain, to your discernment at least, the entire process by which their minds have attained their present state, recounting all the most impressive circumstances. If they should read these memoirs to you in succession, while your benevolence, and the moral principles according to which you felt and estimated, were kept at the highest pitch, you would often, during the disclosure, regret to observe how many things may be the causes of irretrievable mischief. Why is the path of life, you would say, so haunted as if with evil spirits of every diversity of noxious agency, some of which may patiently accompany, or others of which may suddenly cross, the unfortunate wanderer? And you would regret to observe into how many forms of

affections. Unless you had brought into the world some extraordinary refractoriness to the influence of evil, the process that you have undergone could not easily fail of being efficacious. If your parents idolized their own importance in their son so much, that they never opposed your inclinations themselves, nor permitted it to be done by any subject to their authority; if the humble companion, sometimes summoned to the and insolence with the meekness without honor of amusing you, bore your caprices which he had lost his enviable privilege; if you could despoil the garden of some nameless dependent neighbor of the carefully reared flowers, and torment his little dog or cat, without his daring to punish you or to appeal to your infatuated parents; if aged with the appellation of sir,' and their aged men addressed you in a submissive tone, and wives uttered their wonder at your condescension, and pushed their grandchildren away from around the fire for your sake, if you happened, though with the strut of pertness, and your hat on your head, to enter one of their cottages, perhaps to express your contempt of the homely dwelling, furniture, and fare; if, in maturer life, you associated with vile persons, who would forego the contest of equality to be your allies in trampling on inferiors; and if, both then and since, you have been suffered to deem your wealth the compendium or equivalent of every ability and every good quality-it would indeed be immensely strange if you had not become in due time the miscreant, who may thank the power of the laws in civilized society that he is not assaulted with clubs and stones; to whom one could cordially wish the opportunity and the consequences of attempting his tyranny among some such people as those submissive sons of nature in the forests of North America; and whose dependents and domestic relatives may be almost forgiven when they shall one day rejoice at his funeral."

What do you think of that, my reader, as a specimen of embittered eloquence and nervous pith? It is something to read massive and energetic sense, in days wherein mystical twaddle, and subtlety which hopelessly

defies all logic, are sometimes thought ex- | ago, at a time when he was struggling into tremely fine, if they are set out in a style notice, and when he was being very severely which is refined into mere effeminacy.

handled by the critics. That portrait was I cherish a very strong conviction (as has really truculent of aspect. It was sour and been said) that, at least in the case of edu- even ferocious-looking. Years afterwards I cated people, happiness is a grand discipline saw that author, at a time when he had atfor bringing out what is amiable and excel- tained vast success, and was universally reclent. You understand, of course, what I ognized as a great man. How improved mean by happiness. We all know, of course, that face! All the savage lines were gone: that light-heartedness is not very familiar to the bitter look was gone: the great man grown-up people, who are doing the work of looked quite genial and amiable. And I life-who feel its many cares, and who do came to know that he was really all he looked. not forget the many risks which hang over Bitter judgments of men, imputations of evil it. I am not thinking of the kind of thing motives, disbelief in any thing noble or genwhich is suggested to the minds of children, erous, a disposition to repeat tales to the when they read, at the end of a tale, con- prejudice of others, envy, hatred, malice, and cerning its heroine and hero, that "they all uncharitableness,-all these things may lived happily ever after." No; we don't possibly come out of a bad heart; but they look for that. By happiness, I mean free- certainly came out of a miserable one. The dom from terrible anxiety and from pervad- happier any human being is, the better and ing depression of spirits: the consciousness more kindly he thinks of all. It is the man that we are filling our place in life with de- who is always worried, whose means are uncent success and approbation : religious certain, whose home is uncomfortable, whose principle and character: fair physical health nerves are rasped by some kind friend who throughout the family; and moderate good daily repeats and enlarges upon every thing temper and good sense. And I hold, with disagreeable for him to hear: it is he who Sydney Smith, and with that keen practical thinks hardly of the character and prospects philosopher, Becky Sharpe, that happiness of humankind, and who believes in the esand success tend very greatly to make peo-sential and unimprovable badness of the ple passably good. Well, I see an answer to the statement, as I do to most statements; but, at least, the beam is never subjected to the strain which would break it. I have seen the gradual working of what I call happiness and success in ameliorating character. I have known a man who, by necessity, by the pressure of poverty, was driven to write for the magazines: a kind of work for which he had no special talent or liking, and which he had never intended to attempt. There was no more miserable, nervous, anxious, disappointed being on earth than he was when he began his writing for the press. And sure enough his articles were bitter and ill-set to a high degree. They were thoroughly ill-natured and bad. They were not devoid of a certain cleverness; but they were the sour products of a soured nature. But that man gradually got into comfortable circumstances: and with equal step with his lot the tone of his writings mended; till as a writer he became conspicuous for the healthful, cheerful, and kindly nature of all he produced. I remember seeing a portrait of an eminent author, taken a good many years

race.

This is not a treatise on the formation of character: it pretends to nothing like completeness. If this essay were to extend to a volume of about three hundred and eighty pages, I might be able to set out and discuss, in something like a full and orderly fashion, the influences under which human beings grow up, and the way in which to make the best of the best of these influences, and to evade or neutralize the worst. And if, after great thought and labor, I had produced such a volume, I am well aware that nobody would read it. So I prefer to briefly glance at a few aspects of a great subject just as they present themselves, leaving the complete discussion of it to solid individuals with more leisure at their command.

Physically, no man is made the most of. Look at an acrobat or a boxer: there is what your limbs might have been made for strength and agility. That is the potential which is in human nature in these respects. I never witnessed a prize-fight, and assuredly I never will witness one: but I am told that when the champions appear in the ring, stripped