to playful attacks upon a man, made in pure thoughtlessness and buoyancy of spirit,—­but to attacks which indicate a settled, deliberate, calculating rancor.  Never be angry with the man who makes such an attack; you ought to be sorry for him.  It is out of great misery that malignity for the most part proceeds.  To give the ordinary mortal a fair chance, let him be reasonably successful and happy.  Do not worry a man into nervous irritability, and he will be amiable.  Do not dip a man in water, and he will not be wet.

Of course, my friend, I know who is to you the most interesting of all beings, and whose history is the most interesting of all histories. You are to yourself the centre of this world, and of all the interests of this world.  And this is quite right.

There is no selfishness about all this, except that selfishness which forms an essential element in personality,—­that selfishness which must go with the fact of one’s having a self.  You cannot help looking at all things as they appear from your own point of view; and things press themselves upon your attention and your feeling as they affect yourself.  And apart from anything like egotism, or like vain self-conceit, it is probable that you may know that a great deal depends upon your exertion and your life.  There are those at home who would fare but poorly, if you were just now to die.  There are those who must rise with you, if you rise, and sink with you, if you sink.  Does it sometimes suddenly strike you, what a little object you are, to have so much depending on you?  Vaguely, in your thinking and feeling, you add your circumstances and your lot to your personality; and these make up an object of considerable extension.  You do so with other people as well as with yourself.  You have all their belongings as a background to the picture of them which you have in your mind; and they look very little when you see them in fact, because you see them without these belongings.  I remember, when a boy, how disappointed I was at first seeing the Archbishop of Canterbury.  It was Archbishop Howley.  There he was, a slender, pale old gentleman, sitting in an arm-chair at a public meeting.  I was chiefly disappointed, because there was so little of him.  There was just the human being.  There was no background of grand accessories.  The idea of the Primate of England which I had in some confused manner in my mind included a vision of the venerable towers of Lambeth,—­of a long array of solemn predecessors, from Thomas a Becket downwards,—­of great historical occasions on which the Archbishop of Canterbury had been a prominent figure; and in some way I fancied, vaguely, that you would see the primate surrounded by all these things.  You remember the Highlander in “Waverley,” who was much mortified when his chief came to meet an English guest, unattended by any retinue, and who exclaimed, in consternation and sorrow, “He has come without his tail!” Even such was my early