they are to become great men in life. Talk of Tennyson! You have
not read Smith's prize poem. Talk of Macaulay! Ah, if you could
see Brown's prize essay! A mother tells you (fathers are generally
less infatuated) how her boy was beyond comparison the most
distinguished and clever in his class--how he stood quite apart
from, any of the others. Your eye happens to fall a day or two
afterwards upon the prize-list advertised in the newspapers, and
you discover that (curiously) the most distinguished and clever
boy in that particular school is rewarded with the seventh prize.
I dare say you may have met with families in which there existed
the most absurd and preposterous belief as to their superiority,
social, intellectual, and moral, above other families which were
as good or better. And it is to be admitted, that if you are happy
enough to have a friend whose virtues and qualifications are really
high, your primary tendency will probably be to fancy him a great
deal cleverer, wiser, and better than, he really is, and to imagine
that he possesses no faults at all. The over-estimate of his good
qualities will be the result of your seeing them constantly, and
having their excellence much pressed on your attention, while from
not knowing so well other men who are quite as good, you are led to
think that those good qualities are more rare and excellent than
in fact they are. And you may possibly regard it as a duty to
shut your eyes to the faults of those who are dear to you, and to
persuade yourself, against your judgment, that they have no faults
or none worth thinking of. One can imagine a child painfully struggling
to be blind to a parent's errors, and thinking it undutiful and
wicked to admit the existence of that: which is too evident. And if
you know well a really good and able man, you will very naturally
think his goodness and his ability to be relatively much greater
than they are. For goodness and ability are in truth very noble