books of morality a little flat and dead, it follows he must have
tried to read them; nor is he saved by the fact that he found them a
little flat and dead; for though this does indeed show that he had
begun to be so familiar with a few first principles as to find it
more or less exhausting to have his attention directed to them
further--yet his words prove that they were not so incorporate with
him that he should feel the loathing for further discourse upon the
matter which honest people commonly feel now. It will be remembered
that he took bribes when he came to be Lord Chancellor.

It is on the same principle that we find it so distasteful to hear
one praise another for earnestness. For such praise raises a
suspicion in our minds (pace the late Dr. Arnold and his following)
that the praiser's attention must have been arrested by sincerity, as
by something more or less unfamiliar to himself. So universally is
this recognised that the world has for some time been discarded
entirely by all reputable people. Truly, if there is one who cannot
find himself in the same room with the life and letters of an earnest
person without being made instantly unwell, the same is a just man
and perfect in all his ways.

But enough has perhaps been said. As the fish in the sea, or the
bird in the air, so unreasoningly and inarticulately safe must a man
feel before he can be said to know. It is only those who are
ignorant and uncultivated who can know anything at all in a proper
sense of the words. Cultivation will breed in any man a certainty of
the uncertainty even of his most assured convictions. It is perhaps
fortunate for our comfort that we can none of us be cultivated upon
very many subjects, so that considerable scope for assurance will
still remain to us; but however this may be, we certainly observe it