ith me that you did not
fail. It is a matter on which you should be bound by our
opinion rather than by your own.

As to that matter of duty I shall have less difficulty
in carrying you with me. Though this renewed task may be
personally disagreeable to you, even though your tastes
should lead you to some other life,--which I think is not
the case,--still if your country wants you, you should
serve your country. It is a work as to which such a one
as you has no option. Of most of those who choose public
life,--it may be said that were they not there, there
would be others as serviceable. But when a man such as you
has shown himself to be necessary, as long as health and
age permit he cannot recede without breach of manifest
duty. The work to be done is so important, the numbers to
be benefited are so great, that he cannot be justified in
even remembering that he has a self.

As I have said before, I trust that my own age and
your goodness will induce you to pardon this great
interference. But whether pardoned or not I shall always
be

Your most affectionate friend,

ST. BUNGAY.

The Duke,--our Duke,--on reading this letter was by no means pleased
by its contents. He could ill bear to be reminded either of his pride
or of his diffidence. And yet the accusations which others made
against him were as nothing to those with which he charged himself.
He would do this till at last he was forced to defend himself against
himself by asking himself whether he could be other than as God had
made him. It is the last and the poorest makeshift of a defence to
which a man can be brought in his own court! Was it his fault that he
was so thin-skinned that all things hurt him? When some coarse man
said to him that which ought not to have been said, was it his fault
that at every word a penknife had stabbed him? Other men had borne
these buffets without shrinking, and had shown themselves thereby to
be more useful, much more efficacious; but he could no more imitate
them than he could procure for himself the skin of a rhinoceros or
the tusk of an elephant. And this shrinking was what men called
pride,--was the pride of which his old friend wrote! "Have I
ever been haughty, unless in my own defence?" he asked himself,
remembering certain passages of humility in his life,--and certain
passages of haughtiness also.

And the Duke told him also that he was diffident