a barrister with no special advantages from rising with general approval to the highest places which a barrister can fill.  A hideous little wretch has appeared for trial in a criminal court, having succeeded in marrying seven wives at once.  A painful hesitation has not hindered a certain eminent person from being one of the principal speakers in the British Parliament for many years.  Yes, even disadvantages never overcome have not sufficed to hold in obscurity men who were at once able and fortunate.  But sometimes the disadvantage was thoroughly overcome.  Sometimes it served no other end than to draw to one point the attention and the efforts of a determined will; and that matter in regard to which Nature seemed to have said that a man should fall short became the thing in which he attained unrivalled perfection.

A heavy drag-weight upon the powers of some men is the uncertainty of their powers.  The man has not his powers at command.  His mind is a capricious thing, that works when it pleases, and will not work except when it pleases.  I am not thinking now of what to many is a sad disadvantage:  that nervous trepidation which cannot be reasoned away, and which often deprives them of the full use of their mental abilities just when they are most needed.  It is a vast thing in a man’s favor, that whatever he can do he should be able to do at any time, and to do at once.  For want of coolness of mind, and that readiness which generally goes with it, many a man cannot do himself justice; and in a deliberative assembly he may be entirely beaten by some flippant person who has all his money (so to speak) in his pocket, while the other must send to the bank for his.  How many people can think next day, or even a few minutes after, of the precise thing they ought to have said, but which would not come at the time!  But very frequently the thing is of no value, unless it come at the time when it is wanted.  Coming next day, it is like the offer of a thick fur great-coat on a sweltering day in July.  You look at the wrap, and say, “Oh, if I could but have had you on the December night when I went to London by the limited mail, and was nearly starved to death!” But it seems as if the mind must be, to a certain extent, capricious in its action.  Caprice, or what looks like it, appears of necessity to go with complicated machinery, even material.  The more complicated a machine is, the liker it grows to mind, in the matter of uncertainty and apparent caprice of action.  The simplest machine—­say a pipe for conveying water—­will always act in precisely the same way.  And two such pipes, if of the same dimensions, and subjected to the same pressure, will always convey the self-same quantities.  But go to more advanced machines.  Take two clocks or two locomotive engines, and though these are made in all respects exactly alike, they will act (I can answer at least for the locomotive engines) quite differently.  One locomotive will swallow a vast