tepped out into the street again, when all was
over! Dear to me then was poverty, which for the moment seemed to make
me a free man. Dear to me was the labour at my desk, which, by
comparison, enabled me to respect myself.

Never again shall I shake hands with man or woman who is not in truth my
friend. Never again shall I go to see acquaintances with whom I have no
acquaintance. All men my brothers? Nay, thank Heaven, that they are
not! I will do harm, if I can help it, to no one; I will wish good to
all; but I will make no pretence of personal kindliness where, in the
nature of things, it cannot be felt. I have grimaced a smile and
pattered unmeaning words to many a person whom I despised or from whom in
heart I shrank; I did so because I had not courage to do otherwise. For
a man conscious of such weakness, the best is to live apart from the
world. Brave Samuel Johnson! One such truth-teller is worth all the
moralists and preachers who ever laboured to humanise mankind. Had _he_
withdrawn into solitude, it would have been a national loss. Every one
of his blunt, fearless words had more value than a whole evangel on the
lips of a timidly good man. It is thus that the commonalty, however well
clad, should be treated. So seldom does the fool or the ruffian in
broadcloth hear his just designation; so seldom is the man found who has
a right to address him by it. By the bandying of insults we profit
nothing; there can be no useful rebuke which is exposed to a _tu quoque_.
But, as the world is, an honest and wise man should have a rough tongue.
Let him speak and spare not!

XIV.

Vituperation of the English climate is foolish. A better climate does
not exist--for healthy people; and it is always as regards the average
native in sound health that a climate must be judged. Invalids have no
right whatever to talk petulantly of the natural changes of the sky;
Nature has not _them_ in view; let them (if they can) seek exceptional
conditions for their exceptional state, leaving behind them many a
million of sound, hearty men and women who take the seasons as they come,
and profit by each in turn. In its freedom from extremes, in its common
clemency, even in its caprice, which at the worst time holds out hope,
our island weather compares well with that of other lands. Who enjoys
the fine day of spring, summer, autumn, or winter so much as an
Englishman? His perpetual talk of the weather is testimony to