D'UNION, between you and your censor; age's philandering, for her
pleasure and your good. Incontestably the young man feels very
much of a fool; but he must be a perfect Malvolio, sick with self-
love, if he cannot take an open buffet and still smile. The
correction of silence is what kills; when you know you have
transgressed, and your friend says nothing and avoids your eye. If
a man were made of gutta-percha, his heart would quail at such a
moment. But when the word is out, the worst is over; and a fellow
with any good-humour at all may pass through a perfect hail of
witty criticism, every bare place on his soul hit to the quick with
a shrewd missile, and reappear, as if after a dive, tingling with a
fine moral reaction, and ready, with a shrinking readiness, one-
third loath, for a repetition of the discipline.

There are few women, not well sunned and ripened, and perhaps
toughened, who can thus stand apart from a man and say the true
thing with a kind of genial cruelty. Still there are some - and I
doubt if there be any man who can return the compliment. The class
of man represented by Vernon Whitford in THE EGOIST says, indeed,
the true thing, but he says it stockishly. Vernon is a noble
fellow, and makes, by the way, a noble and instructive contrast to
Daniel Deronda; his conduct is the conduct of a man of honour; but
we agree with him, against our consciences, when he remorsefully
considers "its astonishing dryness." He is the best of men, but
the best of women manage to combine all that and something more.
Their very faults assist them; they are helped even by the
falseness of their position in life. They can retire into the
fortified camp of the proprieties. They can touch a subject and
suppress it. The most adroit employ a somewhat elaborate reserve
as a means to be frank, much as they wear gloves when they shake