g that which men will not easily let die. When a young military
man, disheartened with the service, sought for an appointment as an
Irish Commissioner of Excise, and was sadly disappointed because he did
not get it, it is probable that he had as little idea as any one else
had that he possessed that aptitude for the conduct of war which was
to make him the Duke of Wellington. And when a young mathematician,
entirely devoid of ambition, desired to settle quietly down and devote
all his life to that unexciting study, he was not aware that he was a
person of whom more was to be made,--who was to grow into the great
Emperor Napoleon. I had other instances in my mind, but after these last
it is needless to mention them. But such cases suggest to us that there
may have been many Folletts who never held a brief, many Keans who never
acted but in barns, many Vandyks who never earned more than sixpence a
day, many Goldsmiths who never were better than penny-a-liners, many
Michaels who never built their St. Peters,--and perhaps a Shakspeare who
held horses at the theatre-door for pence, as the Shakspeare we know of
did, and who stopped there.

Let it here be suggested, that it is highly illogical to conclude that
you are yourself a person of whom a great deal more might have been
made, merely because you are a person of whom it is the fact that very
little has actually been made. This suggestion may appear a truism; but
it is one of those simple truths of which we all need to be occasionally
reminded. After all, the great test of what a man can do must be what a
man does. But there are folk who live on the reputation of being pebbles
capable of receiving a very high polish, though from circumstances
they did not choose to be polished. There are people who stand high in
general estimation on the ground of what they might have done, if they
had liked. You will find students who took no honors at the university,
but who endeavor to impress their friends with the notion, that, if
they had chosen, they could have attained to unexampled eminence. And
sometimes, no doubt, there are great powers that run to waste. There
have been men whose doings, splendid as they were, were no more than a
hint of how much more they could have done. In such a case as that of
Coleridge, you see how the lack of steady industry and of all sense of
responsibility abated the tangible result of the noble intellect God
gave him. But as a general rule, and in the