han they can do. And where they
have themselves failed, they are found to be the most merciless of
detractors. The sour critic thinks of his rival:

"When Heaven with such parts has blest him,
Have I not reason to detest him?"

The mean mind occupies itself with sneering, carping, and fault-finding;
and is ready to scoff at everything but impudent effrontery or
successful vice. The greatest consolation of such persons are the
defects of men of character. "If the wise erred not," says George
Herbert, "it would go hard with fools." Yet, though wise men may learn
of fools by avoiding their errors, fools rarely profit by the example
which, wise men set them. A German writer has said that it is a
miserable temper that cares only to discover the blemishes in the
character of great men or great periods. Let us rather judge them with
the charity of Bolingbroke, who, when reminded of one of the alleged
weaknesses of Marlborough, observed,--"He was so great a man that I
forgot he had that defect."

Admiration of great men, living or dead, naturally evokes imitation
of them in a greater or less degree. While a mere youth, the mind of
Themistocles was fired by the great deeds of his contemporaries, and he
longed to distinguish himself in the service of his country. When the
Battle of Marathon had been fought, he fell into a state of melancholy;
and when asked by his friends as to the cause, he replied "that the
trophies of Miltiades would not suffer him to sleep." A few years later,
we find him at the head of the Athenian army, defeating the Persian
fleet of Xerxes in the battles of Artemisium and Salamis,--his country
gratefully acknowledging that it had been saved through his wisdom and
valour.

It is related of Thucydides that, when a boy, he burst into tears on
hearing Herodotus read his History, and the impression made upon
his mind was such as to determine the bent of his own genius.
And Demosthenes was so fired on one occasion by the eloquence of
Callistratus, that the ambition was roused within him of becoming an
orator himself. Yet Demosthenes was physically weak, had a feeble voice,
indistinct articulation, and shortness of breath--defects which he was
only enabled to overcome by diligent study and invincible determination.
But, with all his practice, he never became a ready speaker; all his
orations, especially the most famous of them, exhibiting indications of
careful elaboration,--the art and industry of t