It is wonderful how ordinary, sensjble persons, with nothing brilliant about them, may live daily in a comfortable feeling that they are great geniuses:  if they live constantly amid a little circle of even the most incompetent judges, who are always telling them that they are great geniuses.  For it is natural to conclude that the opinion of the people whom you commonly see is a fair reflex of the opinion of all the world; and it is wonderful how highly even a very able man will estimate the value of the opinion of even a very stupid man, provided the stupid man entertains and frequently expresses an immensely high opinion of the very able man.  I have known a man, holding a somewhat important position for which he was grossly unfit, and for which every one knew he was grossly unfit; yet perfectly self-satisfied and comfortable under circumstances which would have crushed many men, because he was kept up by two or three individuals who frequently assured him that he was a very eminent and useful person.  These two or three individuals acted as a buffer between him and the estimate of mankind at large.  He received their opinion as a fair sample of the general opinion.  He was indeed a man of very moderate ability; but I have known another of very great talent, who by the laudations of one or two old women was led to suppose that he possessed abilities of a totally different nature from those which he actually possessed.  I do not mean higher abilities, but abilities extending into a field into which his peculiar talents did not reach.  Yet no one would have been sharper at discerning the worthlessness of the judgment of the old women had it been other than very flattering to himself.  Who is there that does not know that sometimes clever young men are bolstered up into a self-conceit which does them much harm with the outer world, by the violent admiration and flattery of their mothers, sisters, and aunts at home?

But not merely does the favourable estimate of the. little circle in which he lives serve to keep a man on good terms with himself; it goes some way towards influencing the estimation in which he is held by mankind at large—­so far, that is, as mankind at large know anything about him.  I have known such a thing as a family whose several members were always informing everybody they met what noble fellows the other members of the family were.  And I am persuaded that all this really had some result.  They were fine fellows, no doubt; but this tended to make sure that they should not be hid under a bushel.  I am persuaded that if half-a-dozen clever young men were to form themselves into a little association, each member of which should be pledged to lose no opportunity of crying up the other five members in conversation, through the press, and in—­every other possible way, this would materially further their success in life and the estimation in which they would be held wherever known.  The world would take them at the value so constantly dinned into its ear.