case of ordinary people, you
need not give a man credit for the possession of any powers beyond those
which he has actually exhibited. If a boy is at the bottom of his class,
it is probably because he could not attain its top. My friend Mr.
Snarling thinks he can write much better articles than those which
appear in the "Atlantic Monthly"; but as he has not done so, I am not
inclined to give him credit for the achievement. But you can see that
this principle of estimating people's abilities, not by what they have
done, but by what they think they could do, will be much approved by
persons who are stupid and at the same time conceited. It is a pleasing
arrangement, that every man should fix his own mental mark, and hold by
his estimate of himself. And then, never measuring his strength with
others, he can suppose that he could have beat them, if he had tried.

* * * * *

Yes, we are all mainly fashioned by circumstances; and had the
circumstances been more propitious, they might have made a great deal
more of us. You sometimes think, middle-aged man, who never have passed
the limits of Britain, what an effect might have been produced upon your
views and character by foreign travel. You think what an indefinite
expansion of mind it might have caused,--how many narrow prejudices it
might have rubbed away,--how much wiser and better a man it might have
made you. Or more society and wider reading in your early youth might
have improved you,--might have taken away the shyness and the intrusive
individuality which you sometimes feel painfully,--might have called out
one cannot say what of greater confidence and larger sympathy. How very
little, you think to yourself, you have seen and known! While others
skim great libraries, you read the same few books over and over; while
others come to know many lands and cities, and the faces and ways of
many men, you look, year after year, on the same few square miles of
this world, and you have to form your notion of human nature from the
study of but few human beings, and these very commonplace. Perhaps it is
as well. It is not so certain that more would have been made of you, if
you had enjoyed what might seem greater advantages. Perhaps you learned
more, by studying the little field before you earnestly and long, than
you would have learned, if you had bestowed a cursory glance upon fields
more extensive by far. Perhaps there was compensation for the fe