impersonations? At a general election it is one name around which
electors rally. The candidate may enlarge as much as he pleases on
political principles, but all his talk will not win him votes enough
for success, unless he says, 'I go with Mr. A.,' the minister, or with
Mr. Z., the chief of the opposition. It was not the Tories who beat
the Whigs when Mr. Pitt dissolved Parliament. It was Mr. Pitt who
beat Mr. Fox, with whom in general political principle--slave-trade,
Roman Catholic emancipation, Parliamentary reform--he certainly agreed
much more than he did with any man in his own cabinet."

"Take care, my young cousin," cried Mivers, in accents of alarm;
"don't set up for a man of genius. Genius is the worst quality a
public man can have nowadays: nobody heeds it, and everybody is
jealous of it."

"Pardon me, you mistake; my remark was purely objective, and intended
as a reply to your argument. I prefer at present to go with the many
because it is the winning side. If we then want a man of genius to
keep it the winning side, by subjugating its partisans to his will, he
will be sure to come. The few will drive him to us, for the few are
always the enemies of the one man of genius. It is they who
distrust,--it is they who are jealous,--not the many. You have
allowed your judgment, usually so clear, to be somewhat dimmed by your
experience as a critic. The critics are the few. They have
infinitely more culture than the many. But when a man of real genius
appears and asserts himself, the critics are seldom such fair judges
of him as the many are. If he be not one of their oligarchical
clique, they either abuse, or disparage, or affect to ignore him;
though a time at last comes when, having gained the many, the critics
acknowledge him. But the difference between the man of action and the