l, how our friendships
would be cut off. We form many such with bad men because they have
agreeable qualities, or may be useful to us. We form many such by
mistake, imagining people to be different from what they really are.'
And he goes on complacently to observe that we shall either have the
satisfaction of meeting these gentlemen in a future state, or be
satisfied without meeting them.

For my part, I do not feel that the scheme of future happiness, which
ought by rights to be in preparation for me, will be at all interfered
with by my not meeting again the man I have in my. mind. To have seen
him in the flesh is sufficient for me. In the spirit I cannot imagine
him; the consideration is too subtle; for, unlike the little man who
had (for certain) a little soul,' I don't believe he has a soul at
all.

He is middle-aged, rich, lethargic, sententious, dogmatic, and, in
short, the quintessence of the commonplace. I need not say, therefore,
that he is credited by the world with unlimited common-sense. And for
once the world is right. He has nothing-original about him, save so
much of sin as he may have inherited from our first parents; there is
no more at the back of him than at the back of a looking-glass--indeed
less, for he has not a grain of quicksilver; but, like the
looking-glass, he reflects. Having nothing else to do, he hangs, as it
were, on the wall of the world, and mirrors it for me as it
unconsciously passes by him--not, however, as in a glass darkly, but
with singular clearness. His vision is never disturbed by passion or
prejudice; he has no enthusiasm and no illusions. Nor do I believe he
has ever had any. If the noblest study of mankind is man, my friend
has devoted himself to a high calling; the living page of human life
has been his favourite and indeed, for these many years, his only
reading. And for this he has had exceptional opportunities. Always a
man of wealth and leisure, he has never wasted himself in that
superficial observation which is often the only harvest of foreign
travel. He despises it, and in relation to travellers, is wont to
quote the famous parallel of the copper wire, 'which grows the
narrower by going further.' A confirmed stay-at-home, he has mingled
much in society of all sorts, and exercised a keen but quite
unsympathetic observation. His very reserve in company (though, when
he catches you alone, he is a button-holder of great tenacity)
encourages free speech in others; th