If a man is malignant or unreliable or mean or selfish, the savour of his fault has a way of noisomely imbuing all his qualities, especially if he is not aware of the deficiency.  If a man is humbly and sadly aware of the thing that is vile, if he makes clumsy and lamentable attempts to get rid of it, one may pity him so much that one may almost find oneself admiring him.  One feels that he is made so, that he cannot wholly help it, and we lose ourselves in wondering why a human being should be so strangely hampered.  But if a man displays an odious fault complacently; if he takes mean advantage of other people, and frankly considers people fools who do not condescend to the same devices; if he gives one to understand that he dislikes and despises one; if he reserves a spiteful respect only for those who can beat him with his own weapons; if he is vulgar, snobbish, censorious, unkind, and self-satisfied into the bargain, it is very hard to say what the duty of a Christian is in the matter.  I met the other day, at a country house, a man whom I will frankly confess that I disliked.  He was a tall, grim-looking man, of uncompromising manners, who told interminable stories, mostly to the discredit of other people—­“not leaving Lancelot brave or Galahad clean.”  His chief pleasure seemed to be in making his hearers uncomfortable.  His stories were undeniably amusing, but left a bad taste in the mouth.  He had an attentive audience, mainly, I think, because most of us were afraid to say what we thought in his presence.  He was a man of wide and accurate knowledge, and delighted in showing up other people’s ignorance.  I suppose the truest courage would have been to withstand him boldly, or, better still, to attempt to convert him to a more generous view of life.  But it did not seem worth the trouble; it was impossible to argue with him successfully, and his conversion seemed more a thing to be prayed for than to be attempted.  One aged and genial statesman who was present did indeed, by persistent courtesy, contrive to give him a few moments of uneasiness; and the sympathies of the party were so plainly on the side of the statesman that even our tyrant appeared to suspect that urbanity was sometimes a useful quality.  We all breathed more freely when he took his departure, and there was a general sense of heightened enjoyment abroad.

Yet it is impossible to compassionate such a man, because he does not need compassion.  He is perfectly satisfied with his position; he does not want people to like him—­he would consider that to be sentimental, and for sentiment of every kind he has a profound abhorrence.  His view of himself is, I suppose, of a brilliant and capable man who holds his own and makes himself felt.  The only result on the mind, from contemplating him, is that one revels in the possibility of metempsychosis and pictures him as being born again to some dreary and thankless occupation, a scavenger or a sewer-cleaner, or, better still, penned in the body of some absurd and inefficient animal, a slug or a jelly-fish, where he might learn to be passive and contemptible.