urce, and indomitable perseverance; then we come to
estimate a variety of qualities that are only evoked by danger. Just
as some gallant skipper might say, "I saw that we couldn't weather the
point, and so I dropped anchor in thirty fathoms, and determined to
trust all to my cables;" or, "I perceived that we were settling down,
so I crowded all sail on, resolved to beach her." In the same spirit I
would like to read in some personal memoir, "Knowing that I could not
rely on my courage; feeling that if pressed hard, I should certainly
have told a lie--" Oh, if we only could get honesty like this! If some
great statesman, some grand foreground figure of his age would sit down
to give his trials as they really occurred, we should learn more of life
from one such volume than we glean from all the mock memoirs we have
been reading for centuries!

It is the special pleading of these records that makes them so
valueless; the writer always is bent on making out his case. It is the
eternal representation of that spectacle said to be so pleasing to the
gods,--the good man struggling with adversity. But what we want to see
is the weak man, the frail man, the man who has to fight adversity
with an old rusty musket and a flint lock, instead of an Enfield rifle,
loading at the breech!

I 'd not give a rush to see Blondin cross the Falls of Niagara on a
tight-rope; but I'd cross the Atlantic to see, "ay, the Lord Mayor or
the Master of the Rolls try it.

Now, much-respected reader, do not for a moment suppose that I have,
even in my most vainglorious raptures, ever imagined that I was here
in these records supplying the void I have pointed out. Remember that I
have expressly told you such confessions, to be valuable, ought to
come from a great man. Painful as the avowal is, I am not a great man!
Elements of greatness I have in me, it is true; but there are wants,
deficiencies, small little details, many of them,--rivets and bolts, as
it were,--without which the machinery can't work; and I know this, and I
feel it.

This digression has all grown out of my unwillingness to mention what
mention I must,--that I passed my night at the little inn on the table
where we supped. I had not courage to assert the right to my bed in the
Count's room; and so I wrapped myself in my cloak, and with my
carpetbag for a pillow, tried to sleep. It was no use; the most elastic
spring-mattress and a down cushion would have failed that night to
lull me