through this brilliant career of school and college work the home belief in their idleness and ignorance continued unchanged, and that hardly at its end was the toil-worn senior wrangler regarded as other than an idle and useless blockhead.  Now, the affection which prompts the under-estimate may be quite as real and deep as that which prompts the over-estimate, but its manifestation is certainly the less amiable and pleasing.  I have known a successful author whose relatives never believed, till the reviews assured them of it, that his writings were anything but contemptible and discreditable trash.

I have been speaking of an honest though erroneous estimate of the qualities of one’s friends, rather than of any expression of that estimate.  The primary tendency is to an over-estimate; the secondary tendency is to an under-estimate.  A commonplace man thinks there never was mortal so wise and good as the friend he values; a man who is a thousandth part of a degree less common-place resolves that he will keep clear of that error, and accordingly he feels bound to exaggerate the failings of his friend and to extenuate his good qualities.  He thinks that a friend’s judgment is very good and sound, and that he may well rely upon it; but for fear of showing it too much regard, he probably shows it too little.  He thinks that in some dispute his friend is right; but for fear of being partial he decides that his friend is wrong.  It is obvious that in any instance in which a man, seeking to avoid the primary error of over-estimating his friend, falls into the secondary of under-estimating him, he will (if any importance be attached to his judgment) damage his friend’s character; for most people will conclude that he is saying of his friend the best that can be said; and that if even he admits that there is so little to approve about his friend, there must be very little indeed to approve:  whereas the truth may be, that he is saying the worst that can be said—­that no man could with justice give a worse picture of the friend’s character.

Not very far removed from this pair of vulgar errors stand the following: 

The primary vulgar error is, to set up as an infallible oracle one whom we regard as wise—­to regard any question as settled finally if we know what is his opinion upon it.  You remember the man in the Spectator who was always quoting the sayings of Mr. Nisby.  There was a report in London that the Grand Vizier was dead.  The good man was uncertain whether to believe the report or not.  He went and talked with Mr. Nisby and returned with his mind reassured.  Now, he enters in his diary that ‘the Grand Vizier was certainly dead.’  Considering the weakness of the reasoning powers of many people, there is something pleasing after all in this tendency to look round for somebody stronger upon whom they may lean.  It is wise and natural in a scarlet-runner to climb up something, for it could not grow up by itself; and for practical purposes it is well that