life he gives us in The Newcomes. It would not have done to make
it otherwise: it is true, though sad: that history of the good and
gallant gentleman, whose life was a long disappointment, a long
failure in all on which he had set his heart; in his early love,
in his ambitious plans for his son, even in his hopes for his son's
happiness, in his own schemes of fortune, till that life of honour
ended in the almshouse at last. How the reader wishes that the
author would make brighter days dawn upon his hero! But the author
cannot: he must hold on unflinchingly as fate. In such a story as
his, truth can no more be sacrificed to our wishes than in real
life we know it to be. Well, all disappointment is discipline; and
received in a right spirit, it may prepare us for better things
elsewhere. It has been said that heaven is a place for those who
failed on earth. The greatest hero is perhaps the man who does his
very best, and signally fails, and still is not embittered by the
failure. And looking at the fashion in which an unseen Power permits
wealth and rank and influence to go sometimes in this world, we are
possibly justified in concluding that in His judgment the prizes
of this Vanity Fair are held as of no great account. A life here,
in which you fail of every end you seek, yet which disciplines you
for a better, is assuredly not a failure.

What a blessing it would be, if men's ambition were in every case
made to keep pace with their ability. Very much disappointment
arises from a man's having an absurd over-estimate of his own
powers, which leads him, to use an expressive Scotticism, to even
himself to some position for which he is utterly unfit, and which
he has no chance at all of reaching. A lad comes to the university
who has been regarded in his own family as a great genius, and
who has even distinguished himself at some little country school.