e, know their real goodness and greatness. Some of
the most handsome women, so we are assured, pass through life without
ever knowing from their looking-glass that they are handsome. And it
is certainly true that men, from sad experience, know their weak
points far better than their good points, which they look on as no
more than natural.

The Autos, for instance, described by John Stuart Mill, has no cause
to be grateful to the Autos that wrote his biography. Mill had been
threatened by several future biographers, and he therefore wrote the
short biographical account of himself almost in self-defence. But
besides the truly miraculous, and, if related by anybody else, hardly
credible achievements of his early boyhood and youth, his great
achievements in later life, the influence which he exercised both by
his writings and still more by his personal and public character,
would have found a far more eloquent and truthful interpreter in a
stranger than in Mill himself. I remember another case where a most
distinguished author tried to escape the oil and the blessings,
perhaps the opposite also, from the hands of his future biographers.
Froude destroyed the whole of his correspondence, and he wished
particularly that all letters written to him in the fullest confidence
should be burnt,--and they were. I think it was a pity, for I know
what valuable letters were destroyed in that _auto da fe_; and yet
when he had done all this, he seems to have been seized with fear, and
just before he returned to Oxford as Regius Professor of Modern
History he began to write a sketch of his own life, which was found
among his papers. Interesting it certainly was, but fortunately his
best friends prevented its publication. It would have added nothing to
what we know of him in his writings, and would never have put his real
merits in their proper light. Besides, it came to an end with his
youth and told us little of his real life.

I flattered myself that I had found the true way out of all these
difficulties, by writing not exactly my own life, but recollections of
my friends and acquaintances who had influenced me most, and guided me
in my not always easy passage through life. As in describing the
course of a river, we cannot do better than to describe the shores
which hem in and divert the river and are reflected on its waves, I
thought that by describing my environment, my friends, and fellow
workers, I could best describe the course of