has altered in the smallest degree. I detect the same little,
hard, repellent core of self, sitting enthroned, cold, unchanging, and
unchanged, "like a toad within a stone," to borrow Rossetti's great
simile. I see exactly the same weaknesses, the same pitiful ambitions,
the same faults. I have learnt, I think, to conceal them a little
better; but they are not eradicated, nor even modified. Even with
regard to their concealment, I have a terrible theory. I believe that
the faults of which one is conscious, which one admits, and even the
faults of which one faintly suspects oneself, and yet supposes that one
conceals from the world at large, are the very faults that are
absolutely patent to every one else. If one dimly suspects that one is
a liar, a coward, or a snob, and gratefully believes that one has not
been placed in a position which inevitably reveals these
characteristics in their full nakedness, one may be fairly certain that
other people know that one is so tainted.

The discouraging point is that one is not similarly conscious of one's
virtues. I take for granted that I have some virtues, because I see
that most of the people whom I meet have some sprinkling of them, but I
declare that I am quite unable to say what they are. A fault is patent
and unmistakable. The old temptation comes upon one, and one yields as
usual; but with one's virtues, if they ever manifest themselves, one's
own feeling is that one might have done better. Moreover, if one tries
deliberately to take stock of one's good points, they seem to be only
natural and instinctive ways of behaving; to which no credit can
possibly attach, because by temperament one is incapable of acting
otherwise.

Another melancholy fact which I believe to be true is this--that the
only good work one does is work which one finds easy and likes. I have
one or two patiently acquired virtues which are not natural to me, such
as a certain methodical way of dealing with business; but I never find
myself credited with it by others, because it is done, I suppose,
painfully and with effort, and therefore unimpressively.

I look round, and the same phenomenon meets me everywhere. I do not
know any instance among my friends where I can trace any radical change
of character. "Sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper et in saecula
saeculorum."

Indeed the only line upon which improvement is possible seems to me to
be this--that a man shall definitely commit himself to a