acquirements of their several members. I have known such a thing as
a family in which certain boys during their early education had it
ceaselessly drilled into them that they were the idlest, stupidest,
and most ignorant boys in the world. The poor little fellows grew
up under that gloomy belief: for conscience is a very artificial
thing, and you may bring up very good boys in the belief that
they are very bad. At length, happily, they went to a great public
school; and like rockets they went up forthwith to the top of their
classes, and never lost their places there. From school they went
to the university, and there won honours more eminent than had ever
been won before. It will not surprise people who know much of human
nature, to be told that through this brilliant career of school
and college work the home belief in their idleness and ignorance
continued unchanged, and that hardly at its end was the toil-worn
senior wrangler regarded as other than an idle and useless blockhead.
Now, the affection which prompts the under-estimate may be quite
as real and deep as that which prompts the over-estimate, but its
manifestation is certainly the less amiable and pleasing. I have
known a successful author whose relatives never believed, till the
reviews assured them of it, that his writings were anything but
contemptible and discreditable trash.

I have been speaking of an honest though erroneous estimate of the
qualities of one's friends, rather than of any expression of that
estimate. The primary tendency is to an over-estimate; the secondary
tendency is to an under-estimate. A commonplace man thinks there
never was mortal so wise and good as the friend he values; a man
who is a thousandth part of a degree less common-place resolves
that he will keep clear of that error, and accordingly he feels
bound to exaggerate the failings of his friend and to extenuate his