of botanical order, as if they had a calculable vegetable development,
neither can we gain much knowledge of them by comparison. It does not
help me at all in my estimate of their characters to compare Mandeville
with the Young Lady, or Our Next Door with the Parson. The wise man does
not permit himself to set up even in his own mind any comparison of
his friends. His friendship is capable of going to extremes with many
people, evoked as it is by many qualities. When Mandeville goes into
my garden in June I can usually find him in a particular bed of
strawberries, but he does not speak disrespectfully of the others.
When Nature, says Mandeville, consents to put herself into any sort of
strawberry, I have no criticisms to make, I am only glad that I have
been created into the same world with such a delicious manifestation of
the Divine favor. If I left Mandeville alone in the garden long enough,
I have no doubt he would impartially make an end of the fruit of all the
beds, for his capacity in this direction is as all-embracing as it is in
the matter of friendships. The Young Lady has also her favorite patch of
berries. And the Parson, I am sorry to say, prefers to have them picked
for him the elect of the garden--and served in an orthodox manner. The
straw-berry has a sort of poetical precedence, and I presume that no
fruit is jealous of it any more than any flower is jealous of the rose;
but I remark the facility with which liking for it is transferred to the
raspberry, and from the raspberry (not to make a tedious enumeration) to
the melon, and from the melon to the grape, and the grape to the pear,
and the pear to the apple. And we do not mar our enjoyment of each by
comparisons.

Of course it would be a dull world if we could not criticise our
friends, but the most unprofitable and unsatisfactory criticism is that
by comparison. Criticism is not necessarily uncharitableness, but a
wholesome exercise of our powers of analysis and discrimination. It is,
however, a very idle exercise, leading to no results when we set the
qualities of one over against the qualities of another, and disparage by
contrast and not by independent judgment. And this method of procedure
creates jealousies and heart-burnings innumerable.

Criticism by comparison is the refuge of incapables, and especially is
this true in literature. It is a lazy way of disposing of a young poet
to bluntly declare, without any sort of discrimination of his def