as his certain destination. You remember the many entries in his
diary bearing upon the matter; arid I suppose the opinion of the
most competent was clear as to his unrivalled fitness for the post.
Yet all ended in nothing. The race was not to the swift. The first
favourite was beaten, and more than one outsider has carried ofil
the prize for which he strove in vain. Did any mortal ever dream,
during his days of mediocrity at the bar, or his time of respectability
as a Baron of the Exchequer, that Sir R. M. Rolfe was the future
Chancellor? Probably there is no sphere in which there is more of
disappointment and heartburning than the army. It must be supremely
mortifying to a grey-headed veteran, who has served his country for
forty years, to find a beardless Guardsman put over his head into
the command of his regiment, and to see honours and emoluments
showered upon that fair-weather colonel. And I should judge that
the despatch written by a General after an important battle must
be a source of sad disappointment to many who fancied that their
names might well be mentioned there. But after all, I do not know
but that it tends to lessen disappointment, that success should
be regarded as going less by merit than by influence or good luck.
The disappointed man can always soothe himself with the fancy that
he deserved to succeed. It would be a desperately mortifying thing
to the majority of mankind, if it were distinctly ascertained
that each man gets just what he deserves. The admitted fact that
the square man, is sometimes put in the round hole, is a cause
of considerable consolation to all disappointed men, and to their
parents, sisters, aunts, and grandmothers.

No stronger proof can be adduced of the little correspondence that
often exists between success and merit, than the fact that the
self-same man, by the exercise of the self-same powers, may at one