ere is a certain mediocrity that helps to make
a man appear wise."

And what says Montaigne, that great connoisseur of the human heart?--

"Our usual custom is to go right or left, over mountains or valleys,
just as we are drifted by the wind of opportunity. We change like that
animal which assumes the color of the spots where it is placed. All is
vacillation and inconstancy. We do not walk of ourselves; we are carried
away like unto things that float now gently and now impetuously,
according to the uncertain mood of the waters. Every day some new fancy
arises, and our tempers vary with the weather. This fluctuation and
contradiction ever succeeding in us, has caused it to be imagined by
some that we possess two souls; by others, that two faculties are
perpetually at work within us, one inclining us toward good, and the
other toward evil."

Montaigne also says:--"I give my soul sometimes one appearance, and
sometimes another, according to the side on which I look at it; if I
speak variously of myself, it is because I look at myself variously: all
contrarieties, in one degree or other, are found in me, according to the
number of turns given. Thus I am shamefaced, insolent, chaste, sensual,
talkative, taciturn, laborious, delicate, ingenious, stupid, sad,
good-natured, deceitful, true, learned, ignorant, liberal, avaricious,
and prodigal, just according to the way in which I look at myself; and
whoever studies himself attentively, will find this _variety and
discordancy_ even in his judgment.

"We are all _parts of a whole_, and formed of such shapeless, mixed
materials, that every part and every moment does its own work."

If, then, we all experience the varied influences of our passions a
hundred times in a lifetime, not to say in every twenty-four hours; if
we are sensible of a thousand physical and moral causes, perpetually
modifying our dispositions, and our words, making us differ to-day from
what we were yesterday; if even the coldest and most stoical
temperaments do not wholly escape from these influences, how could Moore
be surprised that Lord Byron, who was so sensitive and full of passion,
so hardly used by men and Providence, that he should not prove
invulnerable? Moore was not surprised at it in reality, it is true; he
only made-believe to be so, and that because Lord Byron was wanting in
some of those virtues called peculiarly English. Lord Byron had no
superstitious patriotism; he did not love his coun