But I do not think that there is any subject whatever in regard to which it is so capricious and arbitrary whether you shall run it into Scylla or into Charybdis.  It depends entirely on how it strikes the mind, whether you shall go off a thousand miles to the right or a thousand miles to the lefn You know, if you fire a rifle-bullet at an iron-coated ship, the bullet, if it impinge upon the iron plate at A, may glance away to the west, while if it impinge upon the iron plate at B, only an inch distant from A, it may glance off towards the directly opposite point of the compass.  A very little thing makes all the difference.  You stand in the engine-room of a steamer; you admit the steam to the cylinders, and the paddles turn ahead; a touch of a lever, you admit the selfsame steam to the selfsame cylinders, and the paddles turn astern.  It is so oftentimes in the moral world.  The turning of a straw decides whether the engines shall work forward or backward.

Now, given a friend, to whom you are very warmly attached:  it is a toss-up whether your affection for your friend shall make you,

1.  Quite blind to his faults; or,

2.  Acutely and painfully alive to his faults.

Sincere affection may impel either way.  Your friend, for instance, makes a speech at a public dinner.  He makes a tremendously bad speech.  Now, your love for him may lead you either

1.  To fancy that his speech is a remarkably good one; or,

2.  To feel acutely how bad his speech is, and to wish you could sink through the floor for very shame.

If you did not care for him at all, you would not mind a bit whether he made a fool of himself or not.  But if you really care for him, and if the speech be really very bad, and if you are competent to judge whether speeches in general be bad or not, I do not see how you can escape falling either into Scylla or Charybdis.  And accordingly, while there are families in which there exists a preposterous over-estimate of the talents and acquirements of their several members, there are other families in which the rifle-bullet has glanced off in the opposite direction, and in which there exists a depressing and unreasonable under-estimate of the talents and acquirements of their several members.  I have known such a thing as a family in which certain boys during their early education had it ceaselessly drilled into them that they were the idlest, stupidest, and most ignorant boys in the world.  The poor little fellows grew up under that gloomy belief:  for conscience is a very artificial thing, and you may bring up very good boys in the belief that they are very bad.  At length, happily, they went to a great public school; and like rockets they went up forthwith to the top of their classes, and never lost their places there.  From school they went to the university, and there won honours more eminent than had ever been won before.  It will not surprise people who know much of human nature, to be told that