is a very great man.  And if you live among such, it is pleasant to be regarded by them as a hero.  The Reverend Mr. Smith receives from his parishioners the gift of a silver salver:  the county paper of the following Friday contains a lengthy paragraph recording the fact, and giving the reverend gentleman’s feeling and appropriate reply.  The same worthy clergy-man preaches a charity sermon:  and the circumstance is recorded very fully, the eloquent peroration being given with an accuracy which says much for the perfection of provincial reporting—­given, indeed, word for word.  Now it is natural to think that Mr. Smith is a much more eminent man than those other men whose salvers and charity sermons find no place in the newspaper:  and Mr. Smith’s agricultural parishioners no doubt think so.  A different opinion is entertained by such as know that Mr. Smith’s uncle is a large proprietor in the puffing newspaper; and that he wrote the articles in question in a much warmer strain than that in which they appeared, the editor having sadly curtailed and toned them down.  In the long run, all this quackery does no good.  And indeed long accounts in provincial journals of family matters, weddings and the like, serve only to make the family in question laughed at.  Still, they do harm to nobody.  They are very innocent.  They please the family whose proceedings are chronicled; and if the family are laughed at, why, they don’t know it.

And, happily, that which we do not know does us no harm:  at least, gives us no pain.  And it is a law, a kindly and a reasonable law, of civilized life, that when it is not absolutely necessary that a man should know that which would give him pain, he shall not be told of it.  Only the most malicious violate this law.  Even they cannot do it long:  for they come to be excluded from society as its common enemies.  One great characteristic of educated society is this:  it is always under a certain degree of Restraint.  Nohody, in public, speaks out all his mind.  Nobody tells the whole truth, at least, in public speeches and writings.  It is a terrible thing when an inexperienced man in Parliament (for instance) blurts out the awkward fact which everybody knows, but of which nobody is to speak except in the confidence of friendship or private society.  How such a man is hounded down!  He is every one’s enemy.  Every one is afraid of him.  No one knows what he may say next.  And it is quite fit that he should be stopped.  Civilized life could not otherwise go on.  It is quite right (when you calmly reflect upon it) that the county paper, speaking of the member of Parliament, should tell us how this much-respected gentleman has been visiting his Constituents, but should suppress a good deal of the speech he made, which the editor (though of the same politics) tells you frankly was worthy only of an escaped lunatic.  Above all, it is fit and decent that the very odd private life and character of the legislator should be by tacit consent ignored