exist between a
man's intrinsic power and his fitness for professional success. Still,
as at college, he was distanced in the race by men greatly his inferiors
in general force of mind, but better provided with the talent for
bringing their gifts to market. Such a position was trying, for it was
inevitable that he should be himself more conscious of his abilities
than of his limitations. His incapacity for acquiring the dexterities by
which men accommodate themselves to their neighbours' wants implied a
tendency rather to under-estimate the worth, whatever it may be, of such
dexterities. The obstacle to his success was just the want of
appreciation of certain finer shades of conduct, and therefore remained
unintelligible to himself. He was like a painter of very keen and yet
narrowly limited vision, who could not see the qualities which lead
people to prefer the work of a long-sighted man. Yet he not only never
lost heart, but, so far as I can discover, was never for a moment
querulous or soured. He was never for an instant in danger of becoming a
'man with a grievance.' He thought, of course, that his views were
insufficiently appreciated; but he complained, not of individuals, but
of general causes which were practically irremovable, and against which
it was idle to fret. If, in writing to his closest friends, he indulges
in a momentary grumble over the 'bursting of a bubble,' he always adds
that he is ashamed of himself for the feeling, and emphatically declares
himself to be one of the happiest and most fortunate of men. When,
therefore, I report his various disappointments, I must be understood to
imply that they never lowered his courage even in the most trifling
degree, or threw over his course more than such passing fits of shadow
as even the strongest man must sometimes traverse. Nobody could have
been cheerier, more resolute, or more convinced that his lines had
fallen in pleasant places.

V. THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY

Here I shall notice some of the employments in which he found
distraction from the various worries of his career. In the first place,
he had a boundless appetite for books. When he returned from India he
rubbed up his old classical knowledge; and, though he had far too much
sense to despise the help of 'cribs,' he soon found himself able to get
on pretty well without them. He mentions a number of authors, Homer, for
example, and Aeschylus, who supplied a motto for 'Liberty, Equality,
Fratern