will try his patience, his endurance, his chivalry to the uttermost; and he will never fail her for an instant—­he will never even confess to himself in the loneliness of his own heart that there is anything amiss.  The severest criticism he will ever pass upon her will be a half-hearted wish that she should exhibit the best side of herself more consistently.  And so I come at last to think that there are many worse things in the world for a strong man than to be the bulwark and fortress of a thoroughly inferior nature.  He feels the strain at first, because it is all so different from what he expected and hoped.  But he will soon grow used to that.  And, after all, his wife is both lovely and healthy; she will always be delightful to look at.  Indeed, if he can teach, her to hold her tongue, to listen instead of rattling away, to smile with those pretty eyes of hers as if she understood, to ask the simplest questions about other people’s tastes and preferences, instead of describing her own garden and poultry-yard, she might pass for a delightful and even enchanting woman.  But I fear that neither he nor she are quite clever enough for that.  I do not personally envy my old friend; if I were in his position, the situation would bring out the very worst side of my nature.  But because I realise how much better a fellow he is than myself, I believe that he has every prospect of being a decidedly happy man.

XXXV

There are certain writers—­men, too, of ability, humour, perspicacity, with wide knowledge, lucidity of expression, firm intellectual grip, genuine admirations, who really live among the things of the mind—­whose writings are almost wholly distressing to me, and affect me exactly as the cry of an itinerant vendor in a quiet and picturesque town affects me.  It is an honest trade enough; he saves people a great deal of trouble; he sells, no doubt, perfectly wholesome and inexpensive things; but I am glad when he has turned the corner, and when his raucous clamour is heard more faintly—­glad when he is out of sight, and still more when he is out of hearing.  So with these authors; if I take up one of their books, however brilliant and even true the statements may be, I am sorry that the writer has laid hands upon a thing I admire and value.  He seems like a damp-handed auctioneer, bawling in public, and pointing out the beauties of a mute and pathetic statue.

I am thinking now of one writer in particular, a well-known man of letters, a critic, essayist, and biographer; a man of great acuteness and with strong and vehement preferences in literature.  When I have been forced by circumstances, as I sometimes have, to read one of his books, I find myself at once in a condition of irritable opposition.  He writes sensibly, acutely, epigrammatically; but there is a vile complacency about it all, an underlying assumption that every one who does not agree with him in the smallest particular