s, or swift of hand as Robert Houdin. Practical
efficiency is what is wanted for the business of this world, not
absolute perfection: life is too short to allow any but exceptional
individuals, few and far between, to acquire the power of playing at
rackets as well as rackets can possibly be played. We are obliged to
have a great number of irons in the fire: it is needful that we should
do decently well a great number of things; and we must not devote
ourselves to one thing, to the exclusion of all the rest. And
accordingly, though we may desire to be reasonably muscular and
reasonably active, it will not disturb us to think that in both these
respects we are people of whom more might have been made. It may here
be said that probably there is hardly an influence which tends so
powerfully to produce extreme self-complacency as the conviction, that,
as regards some one physical accomplishment, one is a person of whom
more could not have been made. It is a proud thing to think that you
stand decidedly ahead of all mankind: that Eclipse is first, and the
rest nowhere; even in the matter of keeping up six balls at once, or of
noting and remembering twenty different objects in a shop-window as you
walk past it at five miles an hour. I do not think I ever beheld a human
being whose aspect was of such unutterable pride as a man I lately saw
playing the drum as one of a certain splendid military band. He was
playing in a piece in which the drum music was very conspicuous; and
even an unskilled observer could remark that his playing was absolute
perfection. He had the thorough mastery of his instrument. He did the
most difficult things not only with admirable precision, but without
the least appearance of effort. He was a great, tall fellow: and it was
really a fine sight to see him standing very upright, and immovable save
as to his arms, looking fixedly into distance, and his bosom swelling
with the lofty belief, that, out of four or five thousand persons who
were present, there was not one who, to save his life, could have done
what he was doing so easily.

So much of physical dexterity. As for physical grace, it will be
admitted that in that respect more might be made of most human beings.
It is not merely that they are ugly and awkward naturally, but that they
are ugly and awkward artificially. Sir Bulwer Lytton, in his earlier
writings, was accustomed to maintain, that, just as it is a man's duty
to cultivate his mental pow