we can rightly
distinguish their narrower joys from the joy known to them who are
striving on high, then perhaps does the struggle itself appear to
become less important; but, for all that, we love it the more. And the
reward is the sweeter to us for the silence that enwraps its coming;
nor is this from a desire to keep our happiness secret--such as a
crafty courtier might feel who hugs fortune's favours to him--but,
perhaps, because it is only when happiness thus whispers low in our
ear, and no other men know, that it is not according us joys that are
filched from our brother's share. Then do we no longer say to
ourselves, as we look on those brothers: "How great is the distance
between such as these and myself," but in all simplicity do we murmur
at last to ourselves: "The loftier my thoughts become, the less is
there to divide me from the humblest of my fellow-creatures, from those
who are most plentiful on earth; and every step that I take towards an
uncertain ideal, is a step that brings me the nearer to those whom I
once despised, in the vanity and ignorance of my earliest days."

After all, what is a humble life? It is thus we choose to term the life
that ignores itself, that drains itself dry in the place of its
birth--a life whose feelings and thoughts, whose desires and passions,
entwine themselves around the most insignificant things. But it
suffices to look at a life for that life to seem great. A life in
itself can be neither great nor small; the largeness is all in the eye
that surveys it; and an existence that all men hold to be lofty and
vast, is one that has long been accustomed to look loftily on itself
from within. If you have never done this, your life must be narrow; but
the man who watches you live will discern, in the very obscurity of the
corner you fill, an element of horizon, a foothold to cling to, whence
his thoughts will rise with surer and more human strength. There is not
an existence about us but at first seems colourless, dreary, lethargic:
what can our soul have in common with that of an elderly spinster, a
slow-witted ploughman, a miser who worships his gold? Can any
connection exist between such as these and a deep-rooted feeling, a
boundless love for humanity, an interest time cannot stale? But let a
Balzac step forward and stand in the midst of them, with his eyes and
ears on the watch; and the emotion that lived and died in an
old-fashioned country parlour shall as mightily stir ou