ectly well. In birth, parentage, and education, you are
superior to me; but in life, character, and behaviour, I am superior to
you."

Unlike Sheridan, Burke, his countryman, was a great man of character. He
was thirty-five before he gained a seat in Parliament, yet he found time
to carve his name deep in the political history of England. He was a
man of great gifts, and of transcendent force of character. Yet he had a
weakness, which proved a serious defect--it was his want of temper; his
genius was sacrificed to his irritability. And without this apparently
minor gift of temper, the most splendid endowments may be comparatively
valueless to their possessor.

Character is formed by a variety of minute circumstances, more or less
under the regulation and control of the individual. Not a day passes
without its discipline, whether for good or for evil. There is no act,
however trivial, but has its train of consequences, as there is no
hair so small but casts its shadow. It was a wise saying of Mrs.
Schimmelpenninck's mother, never to give way to what is little; or
by that little, however you may despise it, you will be practically
governed.

Every action, every thought, every feeling, contributes to the
education of the temper, the habits, and understanding; and exercises
an inevitable influence upon all the acts of our future life. Thus
character is undergoing constant change, for better or for worse--either
being elevated on the one hand, or degraded on the other. "There is no
fault nor folly of my life," says Mr. Ruskin, "that does not rise up
against me, and take away my joy, and shorten my power of possession, of
sight, of understanding. And every past effort of my life, every gleam
of rightness or good in it, is with me now, to help me in my grasp of
this art and its vision." [107]

The mechanical law, that action and reaction are equal, holds true also
in morals. Good deeds act and react on the doers of them; and so do
evil. Not only so: they produce like effects, by the influence of
example, on those who are the subjects of them. But man is not the
creature, so much as he is the creator, of circumstances: [108] and, by
the exercise of his freewill, he can direct his actions so that they
shall be productive of good rather than evil. "Nothing can work me
damage but myself," said St. Bernard; "the harm that I sustain I carry
about with me; and I am never a real sufferer but by my own fault."

The best sort of c