t.

But the morality of the thing, you will be glad to hear, is excellent;
for it is only by trying to understand others that we can get our own
hearts understood; and in matters of human feeling the clement judge is
the most successful pleader.

FOOTNOTE:

[4] "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers," Wednesday, p. 283.

II

CRABBED AGE AND YOUTH

"You know my mother now and then argues very notably; always very
warmly at least. I happen often to differ from her; and we both think
so well of our own arguments, that we very seldom are so happy as to
convince one another. A pretty common case, I believe, in all
_vehement_ debatings. She says, I am _too witty_; Anglice, _too
pert_; I, that she is _too wise_; that is to say, being likewise put
into English, _not so young as she had been_."--MISS HOWE to MISS
HARLOWE, "Clarissa," vol. ii. Letter xiii.

There is a strong feeling in favour of cowardly and prudential proverbs.
The sentiments of a man while he is full of ardour and hope are to be
received, it is supposed, with some qualification. But when the same
person has ignominiously failed, and begins to eat up his words, he
should be listened to like an oracle. Most of our pocket wisdom is
conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from
ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity. And
since mediocre people constitute the bulk of humanity, this is no doubt
very properly so. But it does not follow that the one sort of
proposition is any less true than the other, or that Icarus is not to be
more praised, and perhaps more envied, than Mr. Samuel Budgett, the
Successful Merchant. The one is dead, to be sure, while the other is
still in his counting-house counting out his money; and doubtless this
is a consideration. But we have, on the other hand, some bold and
magnanimous sayings common to high races and natures, which set forth
the advantage of the losing side, and proclaim it better to be a dead
lion than a living dog. It is difficult to fancy how the mediocrities
reconcile such sayings with their proverbs. According to the latter,
every lad who goes to sea is an egregious ass; never to forget your
umbrella through a long life would seem a higher and wiser flight of
achievement than to go smiling to the stake; and so long as you are a
bit of a coward and inflexible in money ma