as, if not
moderate, not extraordinary for his time and his associates. But when a
man's ambition is limited to mere success--when fame and a flash for
himself are all he cares for, and there is no truer, grander motive for
his sustaining the position he has climbed to--when, in short, it is his
own glory, not mankind's good, he has ever striven for--woe, woe, woe
when the hour of success is come! I cannot stop to name and examine
instances, but let me be allowed to refer to that bugbear who is called
up whenever greatness of any kind has to be illustrated--Napoleon the
Great; or let me take any of the lesser Napoleons in lesser grades in
any nation, any age--the men who have had no star but self and
self-glory before them--and let me ask if any one can be named who, if
he has survived the attainment of his ambition, has not gone down the
other side of the hill somewhat faster than he came up it? Then let me
select men whose guiding-star has been the good of their
fellow-creatures, or the glory of God, and watch their peaceful useful
end on that calm summit that they toiled so honestly to reach. The
difference comes home to us. The moral is read only at the end of the
story. Remorse rings it for ever in the ears of the dying--often too
long a-dying--man who has laboured for himself. Peace reads it smilingly
to him whose generous toil for others has brought its own reward.

Sheridan had climbed with the stride of a giant, laughing at rocks, at
precipices, at slippery watercourses. He had spread the wings of genius
to poise himself withal, and gained one peak after another, while
homelier worth was struggling midway, clutching the bramble and clinging
to the ferns. He had, as Byron said in Sheridan's days of decay, done
the best in all he undertook, written the best comedy, best opera, best
farce; spoken the best parody, and made the best speech. Sheridan, when
those words of the young poet were told him, shed tears.

Perhaps the bitter thought struck him, that he had _not_ led the best,
but the _worst_ life; that comedy, farce, opera, monody, and oration
were nothing, nothing to a pure conscience and a peaceful old age; that
they could not save him from shame and poverty--from debt, disgrace,
drunkenness--from grasping, but long-cheated creditors, who dragged his
bed from under the feeble, nervous, ruined old man. Poor Sheridan! his
end was too bitter for us to cast one stone more upon him. Let it be
noted that it was i