gh the name continues blank, I will insert:--

_To his Father_.

"_October 15th_, 1839.--As to my 'over-estimate of ----,' your
expressions rather puzzle me. I suppose there may be, at the outside, a
hundred persons in England whose opinions on such a matter are worth
as much as mine. If by 'the public' you and my Mother mean the other
ninety-nine, I submit. I have no doubt that, on any matter not relating
peculiarly to myself, the judgment of the ninety-nine most philosophical
heads in the country, if unanimous, would be right, and mine, if opposed
to them, wrong. But then I am at a loss to make out, How the decision of
the very few really competent persons has been ascertained to be thus in
contradiction to me? And on the other hand, I conceive myself, from my
opportunities, knowledge and attention to the subject, to be alone quite
entitled to outvote tens of thousands of gentlemen, however much my
superiors as men of business, men of the world, or men of merely dry or
merely frivolous literature.

"I do not remember ever before to have heard the saying, whether of
Talleyrand or of any one else, That _all_ the world is a wiser man
than any man in the world. Had it been said even by the Devil, it would
nevertheless be false. I have often indeed heard the saying, _On peut
etre plus FIN qu'un autre, mais pas plus FIN que tous les autres_. But
observe that '_fin_' means _cunning_, not _wise_. The difference between
this assertion and the one you refer to is curious and worth examining.
It is quite certain, there is always some one man in the world wiser
than all the rest; as Socrates was declared by the oracle to be; and as,
I suppose, Bacon was in his day, and perhaps Burke in his. There is also
some one, whose opinion would be probably true, if opposed to that of
all around him; and it is always indubitable that the wise men are the
scores, and the unwise the millions. The millions indeed come round, in
the course of a generation or two, to the opinions of the wise; but
by that time a new race of wise men have again shot ahead of their
contemporaries: so it has always been, and so, in the nature of things,
it always must be. But with cunning, the matter is quite different.
Cunning is not _dishonest wisdom_, which would be a contradiction
in terms; it is _dishonest prudence_, acuteness in practice, not in
thought: and though there must always be some one the most cunning in
the world, as well