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CHAPTER III.

THE REST OF IT.

HENEVER any preacher begins his sermon by

saying, that before proceeding to his proper subject he will recapitulate what he said upon a former occasion, the effect on the writer's attention is most paralysing. Probably the effect on the attention of most human beings is the like.

Therefore, I make no reference to that very long essay which you may have read in former pages of this volume, under the title Concerning Ten Years with some Account of Things learned in them, beyond saying that, after writing a certain portion of that document, the belief became forcibly impressed on me, that nobody could be expected to read any more of it. Thereupon I stopped, promising to continue that essay at another time: and here is the rest of it. I remark that American editors call the rest of a book, essay, or the like, the balance of it. But this chapter will not in any degree balance the former one; because that was very long, and this will be very short.

If you please, you may ascertain, by turning back to it, what was the matter treated in the last paragraph of the

former essay. But not from me shall you learn what it

was.

My friend Smith recently related to me an incident of his boyhood, which I am now to relate to you. On a certain occasion, he did for the first time in his recollection, practise what may be called the art of Petty Diplomacy. He and certain other boys of a certain school, competed for a prize offered by the master to the boy who could, with chiefest oratorical effect, repeat the famous poem of The Battle of Hohenlinden. The contest being over, a little man named Styles was declared to have done best; Smith was second. Accordingly Styles was to receive the higher prize; Smith the inferior. The prizes consisted of little books illustrated with pictures. The pictures in one were printed in bright colours; those of the other were in plain black and white. The master of the school presented the two books to the observation of Styles, telling him to take his choice. Around stood the boys of the school intently regarding. Then Smith, eager to get the coloured book, loudly expressed his admiration for the other; declaring it to be much the better of the two. Thus Smith hoped to induce Styles to choose it, and leave the coloured one for himself. Smith records that his primary experience of diplomatic action was discouraging. For Styles at once seized the bright-coloured book, and then said to Smith, "Oh, how nice that you like the other best for you shall have it. And I like this one best!"

We have all seen a great deal of that kind of thing.

Sometimes it is successful, sometimes not.

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It is gratifying to one to find petty diplomacy fail ;-to discern that it does not reach the end designed; that it is seen through; and only infuriates those whom it desired to lead unconsciously by the nose. To escape contempt, it is essential that petty diplomacy succeed. Success is the test with it as well as with treason. Smith told me that in after life he had occasion to converse with Mr Deepe, as to a vacant office. Mr Deepe declared himself very anxious that Styles should have it. Then," says Smith, "of course you will propose Styles for it." Deepe (it should be said) was one of the electoral college, with whom the filling up of that office lay. "Oh, no,” said Deepe, with a look of great penetration and astuteness. "There is a way of doing these things. I shall propose Jones for it. I know Jones will refuse it: and this will smooth the way to Styles getting it." Let us trust that Mr Deepe generally fails in attaining the ends he seeks in this manly fashion. And when a man comes to be known for a diplomatist who prides himself on his tact in managing people, his chance of success in managing people becomes small. I have no firmer belief than that straight-forward honesty is in the long run the most efficient means of inducing reasonable people to do a reasonable thing.

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Yet let me confess, I have occasionally felt, for a very short time, a certain measure of awe in the presence of small diplomatist. One's own simple idea, that the straight path to any end is the best one, and that you had just as well talk out what you think and feel as talk out

something quite different, is abashed in the presence of what seems a greater depth and reach of mind. Gradually, however, you feel that to compass small ends by a succession of shabby tricks, is a very poor thing; and even if honesty be not the best policy, it is unquestionable that honesty is the thing for an honest man.

The recollection of the air of deep mystery and unfathomable policy one has seen in extremely small men, doing extremely small things, suggests a recollection of the awful majesty of demeanour one has seen assumed by the like extremely small men likewise of the wonderful way in which many rational people are overborne and imposed upon by a dignity of demeanour which to others is suggestive merely of Mr Carlyle's windbag, or of the proverbial beggar on horseback. There is something annoying and irritating in witnessing this toadyism of infinitesimally small men; whose airs, one would say, could excite no feeling save a mingled one of amusement and contempt. You may occasionally hear intelligent men speak of such, as though they were the mightiest of the earth. Have not I heard one of the most amiable of men declare that Dr Log was a far greater man than Lord Macaulay? It is as though a butcher's boy, whose horse trots the fastest of all the horses in Little Pedlington, should be quite sure that the Queen had often expressed her admiration for that fast-trotting though broken-kneed nag. My friend Brown tells me that once on a time a really clever friend, who had narrowed his mind by undue concentration of it on a region of very small interests, and

by setting before himself a deplorably petty end of ambition, came to call for him. Brown was busy at his desk, and asked his friend to wait for a minute. His friend took up from the table that volume, bound in red, called the Men of the Time; and eagerly sought for the names of seven or eight individuals whom he esteemed as great. Not one of them was there. The friend sat down and gasped; and manifestly felt the earth crumbling away beneath him. Yet I have no doubt all this did him good.

Now, it is bad to toady even a duke, who represents a grand old lineage, and whose personality is surrounded by a crowd of stirring associations. It is bad to toady even an archbishop, who is perhaps a very great man, and assuredly a very lucky man. At the worst, the archbishop is to be looked at with the like interest to that with which you look at the man who has drawn the thirty thousand pound prize in a lottery. But it is infinitely more wretched, degrading, and disgusting to toady Dr Bumptious or Professor Donkey. Yet you may have seen, no one can tell why, such mortals flattered, caressed, and petted like spoiled children, though they never did any good to any one but themselves in all their days. Let me add, that toadyism is never so offensive as when it is flavoured with religious language. Then it becomes the most hateful of cant. Thus it was when a hoary reprobate who had served the devil diligently as long as he had strength to serve anybody at all, having professed some penitence in the last hours of life (which