as the invariably lucky man—­the man whom all this system of things appears to favour.  You knew such a one at school:  you knew him at college:  you knew him at the bar, in the Church, in medicine, in politics, in society.  Somehow he pushes his way:  things turn up just at the right time for him:  great people take a fancy to him:  the newspapers cry him up.  Let us hope that you do not look at him with any feeling of envy or bitterness; but you cannot help looking at him with great interest, he is so like yourself, and at the same time so very unlike you.  Philosophers tell us that real happiness is very equally distributed; but there is no doubt that there is a tremendous external difference between the man who lives in a grand house, with every appliance of elegance and luxury, with plump servants, fine horses, many carriages, and the poor struggling gentleman, perhaps a married curate, whose dwelling is bare, whose dress is poor, whose fare is scanty, whose wife is careworn, whose children are ill-fed, shabbily dressed, and scantily educated.  It is conceivable that fanciful wants, slights, and failures, may cause the rich man as much and as real suffering as substantial wants and failures cause the poor; but the world at large will recognise the rich man’s lot as one of success, and the poor man’s as one of failure.

This is a world of competition.  It is a world full of things that many people wish to get, and that all cannot get at once; and to say this is much as to say that this is a world of failure and disappointments.  All things desirable, by their very existence imply the disappointment of some.  When you, my reader, being no longer young, look with a philosophic eye at some pretty girl entering a drawing-room, you cannot but reflect, as you survey the pleasing picture, and more especially when you think of the twenty thousand pounds—­Ah! my gentle young friend, you will some day make one heart very jolly, but a great many more extremely envious, wrathful, and disappointed.  So with all other desirable things; so with a large living in the Church; so with aliy place of dignity; so with a seat on the bench; so with the bishopric; so with the woolsack; so with the towers of Lambeth.  So with smaller matters; so with a good business in the greengrocery line; so with a well-paying milk-walk; so with a clerk’s situation of eighty pounds a year; so with an errand boy’s place at three shillings a week, which thirty candidates want, and only one can get.  Alas for our fallen race!  Is it not part, at least, of some men’s pleasure in gaining some object which has been generally sought for, to think of the mortification of the poor fellows that failed?