What a rude shock to the poor fellow's estimate of himself; what
a smashing of the hopes of those at home, is sure to come when he
measures his length with his superiors; and is compelled, as is
frequently the case, to take a third or fourth-rate position. If
you ever read the lives of actors (and every one ought, for they
show you a new and curious phase of life), you must have smiled
to see the ill-spelled, ungrarnmatical letters in which some poor
fellow writes to a London manager for an engagement, and declares
that he feels within him the makings of a greater actor than Garrick
or Kean. How many young men who go into the Church fancy that they
are to surpass Melvill or Chalmers! No doubt, reader, you have
sometimes come out of a church, where you had heard a preacher
aiming at the most ambitious eloquence, who evidently had not the
slightest vocation that way; and you have thought it would be well
if no man ever wished to be eloquent who had it not in him to be
so. Would that the principle were universally true! Who has not
sometimes been amused iff passing along the fashionable street of
a great city, to see a little vulgar snob dressed out within an
inch of his life, walking along, evidently fancying that he looks
like a gentleman, and that he is the admired of all admirers?
Sometimes, in a certain street which I might name, I have witnessed
such a spectacle, sometimes with amusement, oftener with sorrow and
pity, as I thought of the fearful, dark surmises which must often
cross the poor snob's mind, that he is failing in his anxious
endeavours. Occasionally, too, I have beheld a man bestriding a
horse in that peculiar fashion which may be described as his being
on the outside of the animal, slipping away over the hot stones,
possibly at a trot, and fancying ivthough with many suspicions to
the contrary; that he is witching the world with noble horsemanship.
What a pity that such poor fellows will persist in aiming at what