I think, if I were an examiner at one of the Universities, that I should be an extremely popular one.  No man should ever be plucked.  Of course it would be very wrong, and, happily, the work is in the hands of those who are much fitter for it; but, instead of thinking solely and severely of a man’s fitness to pass, I could not help thinking a great deal of the heartbreak it would be to the poor fellow and his family if he were turned.  It would be ruin to any magazine to have me for its editor.  I should always be printing all sorts of rubbishing articles, which are at present consigned to the Balaam-box.  I could not bear to grieve and disappoint the young lady who sends her gushing verses.  I should be picturing to myself the long hours of toil that resulted in the clever lad’s absurd attempt at a review, and all his fluttering hopes and fears as to whether it was to be accepted or not.  No doubt it is by this mistaken kindness that institutions are damaged and ruined.  The weakness of a sympathetic bishop burdens the Church with a clergy-man who for many years will be an injury to her; and it would have been far better even for the poor fellow himself to have been decidedly and early kept out of a vocation for which he is wholly unfit.  I am far from saying that the resolute examiner who plucks freely, and the resolute editor who rejects firmly, are deficient in kindness of heart, or even in vividness of imagination to picture what they are doing:  though much of the suffering and disappointment of this world is caused by men who are almost unaware of what they do.  Like the brothers of Isabella, in Keats’ beautiful poem,

    Half ignorant, they turn an easy wheel,
    That sets sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel.

Yet though principle and moral decision may be in you sufficient to prevent your weakly yielding to the feeling, be sure you always sympathize with failure;—­honest, laborious failure.  And I think all but very malicious persons generally do sympathize with it.  It is easier to sympathize with failure than with success.  No trace of envy comes in to mar your sympathy, and you have a pleasant sense that you are looking down from a loftier elevation.  The average man likes to have some one to look down upon—­even to look down upon kindly.  I remember being greatly touched by hearing of a young man of much promise, who went to preach his first sermon in a little church by the sea-shore in a lonely highland glen.  He preached his sermon, and got on pretty fairly; but after service he went down to the shore of the far-sounding sea, and wept to think how sadly he had fallen short of his ideal, how poor was his appearance compared to what he had intended and hoped.  Perhaps a foolish vanity and self-conceit was at the foundation of his disappointment; but though I did not know him at all, I could not but have a very kindly sympathy for him.  I heard, years afterwards, with great pleasure, that he had attained to no small eminence and success as a pulpit orator; and I should not have alluded to him here but for the fact that in early youth, and amid greater expectations of him, he passed away from this life of high aims and poor fulfilments.  I think how poor Keats, no doubt morbidly ambitious as well as morbidly sensitive, declared in his preface to Endymion that ’there is no fiercer hell than failure in a great attempt.’