y worthy people who would be quite fevered and flurried
by good fortune, if it were to come to any very great degree. It would
injure their heart. As for bad fortune, they can stand it nicely, they
have been accustomed to it so long. I have known a very hard-wrought
man, who had passed, rather early in life, through very heavy and
protracted trials. I have heard him say, that, if any malicious enemy
wished to kill him, the course would be to make sure that tidings of
some signal piece of prosperity should arrive by post on each of six or
seven successive days. It would quite unhinge and unsettle him, he said.
His heart would go: his nervous system would break down. People to whom
pieces of good-luck come rare and small have a great curiosity to know
how a man feels when he is suddenly told that he has drawn one of the
greatest prizes in the lottery of life. The kind of feeling, of course,
will depend entirely on the kind of man. Yet very great prizes, in the
way of dignity and duty, do for the most part fall to men who in some
measure deserve them, or who at least are not conspicuously undeserving
of them and unfit for them. So that it is almost impossible that the
great news should elicit merely some unworthy explosion of gratified
self-conceit. The feeling would in almost every case be deeper and
worthier. One would like to be sitting at breakfast with a truly good
man, when the letter from the Prime-Minister comes in, offering him the
Archbishopric of Canterbury. One would like to see how he would take
it. Quietly, I have no doubt. Long preparation has fitted the man
who reaches that position for taking it quietly. A recent Chancellor
publicly stated how _he_ felt, when offered the Great Seal. His first
feeling, that good man said, was of gratification that he had fairly
reached the highest reward of the profession to which he had given
his life; but the feeling which speedily supplanted _that_ was an
overwhelming sense of his responsibility and a grave doubt as to his
qualifications. I have always believed, and sometimes said, that good
fortune--not so great or so sudden as to injure one's nerves or
heart, but kindly and equable--has a most wholesome effect upon human
character. I believe that the happier a man is, the better and kinder
he will be. The greater part of unamiability, ill-temper, impatience,
bitterness, and uncharitableness comes out of unhappiness. It is because
a man is so miserable that he is such a s