I approach you with fear and trembling.  Somewhere in the Cave of the Winds you have your home.  The ancient Authors, to their discredit, make no mention of your existence there, but the fact is as I have stated it.  The East wind blows into your gaping mouth, and forth you go, puffing and swelling with an alien importance, to do your hateful work.  You hover over a second-rate Statesman, who has attracted the applause of a Party by an opportune speech, compiled by the industry of a humble Secretary.  From that moment his nature changes.  Though he may have been simple and beloved, yet, through you, he shall become pompous, and abhorred.  His fellow-creatures are thenceforth mere material for his trampling feet; he swells into regions to which no criticism can reach; he covers himself in a triple hide of vanity, ostentation, and disdain; he hails himself continually as the unaided Saviour of his country, and dies in the odour of braggadocio, without a genuine friend to mourn his loss.

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Or, again, you select some common, smug-faced Clergyman, capable, no doubt, if he were left alone, of guiding his flock quietly into the strait paths of goodness and humility.  You turn him into a loud-voiced Clerical quack, vending his wretched patent medicines of salvation in a style of offensive denunciation that would have ruined a host of Dulcamaras, trained in the insinuating methods of the ordinary trade.  But on this the Clergyman thrives, and weak women fall prostrate before his roaring insincerity.

Nor do you neglect the young.  Heavens!  I remember I was once favoured with the confidences of WILLIAM JOSKINS BACON, an Undergraduate, generally known to his intimates as “Side of Bacon.”  I shudder to recollect how that amazing creature discoursed to me about his popularity, his influence, his surprising deeds both of valour and of discretion.  With one nod—­and, as he spoke, he gave me an illustration of his Olympian method—­he had awed his Head-master—­a present ornament of the Bench of Bishops—­into a terrified silence, from which he recovered only to bless the name of JOSKINS, and hold him up as a pattern to his schoolfellows.  At a single phrase of scorn from those redoubtable lips, his College Tutor had withered into acquiescence, and had never dared to refuse him an exeat from that day forth.  “I can’t help pitying the beggar,” said JOSKINS—­“but I had to do it.  You must make these fellows feel you’re their master, or they’ll never give you a moment’s peace.  Halloa!” he continued, as a brawny athlete sauntered into the room, “how’s the boat going, BULLEN?  Not very well, eh?  Well, remember I’m ready to lend you a hand, and pull you through when things get desperate.”  The smile with which this offer was received had no effect upon my companion.  He took it rather as a tribute to the subtle humour which, as he believed, lay lurking in his simplest utterances.  “Always make ’em laugh,” he observed, with pride.  “It keeps up the spirits of these poor devils of rowing-men; and old BULLEN knows I’m all there when I’m wanted.”  But I had heard enough, and departed from him, feeling as though a steam-roller had passed over my moral nature, and flattened out my self-respect.