amages for which we may be
certain he would loudly clamor. Why do we not hate him? Listen to him:--

"Upon my uttering these words, there was a general outcry, the noblemen
affirming that I promised too much. But one of them, who was a great
philosopher, said in my favor, 'From the admirable symmetry of shape and
happy physiognomy of this young man, I venture to engage that he will
perform all he promises, and more.' The Pope replied, 'I am of the same
opinion;' then calling Trajano, his gentleman of the bedchamber, he
ordered him to fetch me five hundred ducats."

And so it always ended: suspicions, aroused most reasonably, allayed
most unreasonably, and then--ducats. He deserved hanging, but he died in
his bed. He wrote his own memoirs after a fashion that ought to have
brought posthumous justice upon him, and made them a literary gibbet,
on which he should swing, a creaking horror, for all time; but nothing
of the sort has happened. The rascal is so symmetrical, and his
physiognomy, as it gleams upon us through the centuries, so happy, that
we cannot withhold our ducats, though we may accompany the gift with a
shower of abuse.

This only proves the profundity of an observation made by Mr. Bagehot--a
man who carried away into the next world more originality of thought
than is now to be found in the Three Estates of the Realm. Whilst
remarking upon the extraordinary reputation of the late Francis Horner
and the trifling cost he was put to in supporting it, Mr. Bagehot said
that it proved the advantage of "keeping an atmosphere."

The common air of heaven sharpens men's judgments. Poor Horner, but for
that kept atmosphere of his always surrounding him, would have been
bluntly asked "what he had done since he was breeched," and in reply he
could only have muttered something about the currency. As for our
special rogue Cellini, the question would probably have assumed this
shape: "Rascal, name the crime you have not committed, and account for
the omission."

But these awkward questions are not put to the lucky people who keep
their own atmospheres. The critics, before they can get at them, have to
step out of the every-day air, where only achievements count and the
Decalogue still goes for something, into the kept atmosphere, which they
have no sooner breathed than they begin to see things differently, and
to measure the object thus surrounded with a tape of its own
manufacture. Horner--poor, ugly, a man neither of w