and very grave things, besides being against you.  It is not for you to speak in the name of God and the universe.  You may not wish to say much about the injury done to yourself, but there it is; and as to the choosing for your friend the man who has greatly injured you, in most cases such a choice would be a very unwise one, because in most cases it would amount to this—­that you should select a man for a certain post mainly because he has shown himself possessed of qualities which unfit him for that post.  That surely would be very foolish.  If you had to appoint a postman, would you choose a man because he had no legs?  And what is very foolish can never be very magnanimous.

The right course to follow lies between the two which have been set out.  The man who has done wrong to you is still a wrong-doer.  The question you have to consider is, What ought your conduct to be towards a wrong-doer?  Let there be no harbour given to any feeling of personal revenge.  But remember that it is your duty to disapprove what is wrong, and that it is wisdom not too far to trust a man who has proved himself unworthy to be trusted.  I have no feeling of selfish bitterness against the person who deceived me deliberately and grossly, yet I cannot but judge that deliberate and gross deceit is bad; and I cannot but judge that the person who deceived me once might, if tempted, deceive me again:  so he shall not have the opportunity.  I look at the horse which a friend offers me for a short ride.  I discern upon the knees of the animal a certain slight but unmistakeable roughness of the hair.  That horse has been down; and if I mount that horse at all (which I shall not do except in a case of necessity), I shall ride him with a tight rein, and with a sharp look-out for rolling stones.

Another matter in regard to which Scylla and Charybdis are very discernible, is the fashion in which human beings think and speak of the good or bad qualities of their friends.

The primary tendency here is to blindness to the faults of a friend, and over-estimate of his virtues and qualifications.  Most people are disposed extravagantly to over-value anything belonging to or connected with themselves.  A farmer tells you that there never were such turnips as his turnips; a schoolboy thinks that the world cannot show boys so clever as those with whom he is competing for the first place in his class; a clever student at college tells you what magnificent fellows are certain of his compeers—­how sure they are to become great men in life.  Talk of Tennyson!  You have not read Smith’s prize poem.  Talk of Macaulay!  Ah, if you could see Brown’s prize essay!  A mother tells you (fathers are generally less infatuated) how her boy was beyond comparison the most distinguished and clever in his class—­how he stood quite apart from, any of the others.  Your eye happens to fall a day or two afterwards upon the prize-list advertised in the newspapers, and you discover that