mired it!
how he would have pressed the poet in his arms, and have given him
champagne up at Richmond! But who now has sympathy for failure? To
fail is to be disgraced. _Vae victis!_

There is something very painful in these races, which we English are
always running, to one who has tenderness enough to think of the nine
beaten horses instead of the one who has conquered. Look at that
list which has just come out after our grand national struggle at
Cambridge. How many wranglers are there? Thirty, shall we say? and
it is always glorious to be a wrangler. Out of that thirty there is
probably but one who has not failed, who is not called on to submit
to the inward grief of having been beaten. The youth who is second,
who has thus shown himself to be possessed of a mass of erudition
sufficient to crush an ordinary mind to the earth, is ready to eat
his heart with true bitterness of spirit. After all his labour, his
midnight oil, his many sleepless nights, his deserted pleasures, his
racking headaches, Amaryllis abandoned, and Neaera seen in the arms of
another--! After all this, to be beaten by Jones! Had it been Green
or Smith he could have borne it. Would it not have been better to do
as others had done? he could have been contented to have gone out in
the crowd; but there is nothing so base as to be second--and then
second to Jones!

Out of the whole lot, Jones alone is contented; and he is told by
his physician that he must spend his next two winters at Cairo. The
intensity of his application has put his lungs into very serious
jeopardy.

It was at Oxford, in the year 184--, that a young man sat in
his college-rooms at Balliol a wretched victim to unsuccessful
competition. It had been everything to him to come out as a first in
classics, and he had dared to dream even of a double-first. But he
had failed in both. The lists had just appeared, and he was only a
second-class man. Now, a second-class man is not much thought of at
Balliol, and he had lost his chance of an immediate fellowship.

But this was perhaps hardly the worst of it. Arthur Wilkinson, for
such was this gentleman's name, had hitherto run his race in life
alongside a friend and rival named George Bertram; and in almost
every phase of life had hitherto been beaten. The same moment that
had told Wilkinson of his failure had told him also that Bertram
had obtained the place he had so desired. Bertram was the only
double-first man of his year.

As th