social vices, the tendering of unasked
for advice, or, in brief, impertinent advice. There are certain
circumstances and relations in which men have the right, even if they
are not under the obligation, to give unsolicited advice, as where a man
is incurring an unknown danger or foregoing some unsuspected advantage,
or to their servants, or children, or wards, or pupils; but, in all
these cases, either the special circumstance or the special relation
implies superiority of knowledge or superiority of position on the part
of the person tendering the advice, and to assume this superiority,
where it does not plainly exist, is an act of impertinence. Just as the
assumption of superiority wounds a man's self-respect, so does the
disposition to meddle in his affairs, which is generally founded on that
assumption, affect his sense of independence, and, hence, an act which
includes both grounds of offence seems to be a peculiarly legitimate
object of resentment. The lesson of letting other people alone is one
which men are slow to learn, though there are few who, in their own
case, do not resent any attack on their liberty of judgment or action.
This is emphatically one of the cases in which we should try to put
ourselves in the place of others, and act to them as we would that they
should act towards us.

Excessive, and often ill-natured, criticism of others is one of the
minor vices which seem to grow up with advancing civilisation and
intelligence rather than to retreat before them. It seems, as a rule, to
prevail much more in educated than in uneducated society. The reason is
not difficult to find. Education naturally makes men more fastidious and
more keenly alive to the defects of those with whom they associate. And
then, when educated men converse together, they are apt, merely from the
facility with which they deal with language, to express in an
exaggerated form the unfavourable estimate which they have formed of
others, especially if this exaggerated form can be compressed into an
epigram. But it requires little reflexion to see that this keen and
exaggerated habit of criticism must be productive of much discomfort in
a society in which it is general, and that, when applied to literary
work, even though it may be a protection against inaccuracy and breaches
of taste, it must be a great discouragement to the young and repressive
of much honest and valuable effort. To restrain the critical spirit,
whether applied to mi