But there are human beings whom, if you are wise, you would not wish to know you too well:  I mean the human beings (if such there should be) who think very highly of you,—­who imagine you very clever and very amiable.  Keep out of the way of such!  Let them see as little of you as possible.  For, when they come to know you well, they are quite sure to be disenchanted.  The enthusiastic ideal which young people form of any one they admire is smashed by the rude presence of facts.  I have got somewhat beyond the stage of feeling enthusiastic admiration, yet there are two or three living men whom I should be sorry to see:  I know I should never admire them so much any more.  I never saw Mr. Dickens:  I don’t want to see him.  Let us leave Yarrow unvisited:  our sweet ideal is fairer than the fairest fact.  No hero is a hero to his valet:  and it may be questioned whether any clergyman is a saint to his beadle.  Yet the hero may be a true hero, and the clergyman a very excellent man:  but no human being can bear too close inspection.  I remember hearing a clever and enthusiastic young lady complain of what she had suffered, on meeting a certain great bishop at dinner.  No doubt he was dignified, pleasant, clever; but the mysterious halo was no longer round his Lead.  Here is a sad circumstance in the lot of a very great man:  I mean such a man as Mr. Tennyson or Professor Longfellow.  As an elephant walks through a field, crushing the crop at every step, so do these men advance through life, smashing, every time they dine out, the enthusiastic fancies of several romantic young people.

This was to have been a short essay.  But you see it is already long; and I have treated only two of the four Things Slowly Learnt which I had noted down.  After much consideration I discern several courses which are open to me:—­

1.  To ask the editor to allow me forty or fifty pages of the magazine for my essay.

2.  To stop at once, and allow it to remain forever a secret what the two remaining things are.

3.  To stop now, and continue my subject in a future number of the magazine.

4.  To state briefly what the two things are, and get rid of the subject at once.

The fundamental notion of Course No. 1 is manifestly vain.  The editor is doubtless well aware that about sixteen pages is the utmost length of essay which his readers can stand.  Nos. 2 and 3, for reasons too numerous to state, cannot be adopted.  And thus I am in a manner compelled to adopt Course No. 4.

The first of the two things is a practical lesson.  It is this:  to allow for human folly, laziness, carelessness, and the like, just as you allow for the properties of matter, such as weight, friction, and the like, without being surprised or angry at them.  You know, that, if a man is lifting a piece of lead, he does not think of getting into a rage because it is heavy; or if a man is dragging a tree along the ground, he does not get into a rage because