to be dispensed with; and we tolerate
unquestionable wrong to secure the services of eminent ability.
The world really does, and it always has really done so
from the beginning of the human history; and it is
only indolence or cowardice which has left our ethical
teaching halting so far behind the universal and
necessary practice. Even questionable prima donnas, in
virtue of their sweet voices, have their praises hymned
in drawing-room and newspaper, and applause rolls over
them, and gold and bouquets shower on them from lips
and hands which, except for those said voices, would
treat them to a ruder reward. In real fact, we take our
places in this world not according to what we are not,
but according to what we are. His Holiness Pope
Clement, when his audience-room rang with furious
outcries for justice on Benvenuto Cellini, who, as far
as half-a-dozen murders could form a title, was as fair a
candidate for the gallows as ever swung from that
unlucky wood, replied, "All this is very well, gentlemen:
these murders are bad things, we know that. But where
am I to get another Benvenuto, if you hang this one
for me?"

Or, to take an acknowledged hero, one of the old
Greek sort, the theme of the song of the greatest of
human poets, whom it is less easy to refuse to admire
than even our friend Reineke. Take Ulysses. It
cannot be said that he kept his hands from taking what
was not his, or his tongue from speaking what was not
true; and if Frau Ermelyn had to complain (as indeed
there was too much reason for her complaining) of
certain infirmities in her good husband, Penelope, too,
might have urged a thing or two, if she had known as
much about the matter as we know, which the modern
moralist would find it hard to excuse.

After all is said, the capable man is the man to be
admired. The man who tries and fails, what is the
use of him? We are in this world to do something--
not to fail in doing it. Of your bunglers--helpless,
inefficient persons, "unfit alike for good or ill," who try
one thing, and fail because they are not strong enough,
and another, because they have not energy enough, and
a third, because they have no talent--inconsistent,
unstable, and therefore never to excel, what shall we
say of them? what use is there in them? what hope is
there of them? what can we wish for them? to mepot'
einai pant' ariston. It were better for them they had
never been born. To be able to do what a man tries
to do, that i