considers that to be a first-class virtue; we
will pardon almost any shortcoming in other
respects to a generous man, while of economy
we have but a poor opinion. The free-handed
liberal fellow, who spends what he has to-day,
and never looks forward to to-morrow, who
runs in debt, borrows money of his friends, and
leaves his widow and children unprovided for
at his death, we respect, admire, and love;
our tongues may blame him, but our hearts
yearn towards him; while it is but a cold and
grudging approbation we afford to his frugal
neighbour who lives within his small means,
never buys anything without thinking whether
he can do without it, travels second class,
prefers omnibuses to cabs and walking to either,
pays his bills quarterly, is independent of
everybody, gives his own children a fair chance
in the world, and very likely assists those of
his noble-hearted, open-handed acquaintance.
And yet the practice of economy requires the
exercise of an immense amount of resolution,
self-denial, and integrity, qualities which all
hold estimable. The fact is, that a careful
attention to the pence is apt to become exaggerated,
till the virtue of thrift degenerates into
the vice of parsimony, and, as meanness is an
unsocial, while extravagance is a genial, vice, it
is natural enough that we should esteem
generosity, which is apparently related to the latter,
beyond economy, which seems more connected
with the former. A philanthropist, who has
a thousand a year, and lives on three
hundred, in order to have seven hundred to spend
in charity, may get any amount of credit
from the outer world, but his neighbours and
relatives are sure to think him mean and stingy.
For it is an odd fact, that we judge of a man's
generosity more by what he spends on himself
than by what he spends on others, and nothing
goes down with society like the rollicking
selfishness of a man who shares with his friends
the plunder of his tradesmen.

Humility is another second-class virtue. Of
course, as Christians, we are obliged to rank it
very high, in theory, but practically we do not
think much of it. A capital quality for servants
and dependants of all kinds, no doubt, and
perhaps for our equals, so far as their relations
with ourselves are concerned. It fact, we like
humility principally because it does not offend
our own pride.

Sobriety is another minor virtue. We are
constantly told that this is a sober age, so I
suppose it must be so. We likewise (which is a
curious result) see around us a vast amount
of crime, disease, and misery resulting from
drunken habits. And not only among the
working classes. What middle-aged man is
there who has been to a public school, or to
college, or in the army or navy, or resided long
in London, who could not name old friends
who have come to utter grief through tippling?
And yet the most sober of us have a charity for
intemperance which we deny to other vices, and
by no means plume ourselves much on our
abstinence. I fancy that this tenderness for
intoxication arises very much from the pretty
things poets have written about it. Messieurs
the poets are likewise responsible in a great
measure for masculine morality being held as
a second-class virtue. We have improved a
little bit, thanks, perhaps, to Wordsworth and
Tennyson, and, if Pitt were alive now, no
comic paper would lampoon him because he
was not a debauche; but I fear that young
men are not yet particularly anxious to be
thought moral.

But I don't wish to pick at the motes in other
folks' eyes without confessing to a beam in my
own. Moral courage is the virtue which I
cannot for the life of me appreciate properly.
No doubt it is most estimable, most noble,
even heroic, but I am afflicted with a sort of
colour blindness with respect to it, and if I
meet a man who possesses it in any extraordinary
degree, it is ten to one that I mistake him
either for a shameless impostor, a thick-skinned
blockhead, or a prig. I am not quite sure,
alas! that I quite know what the virtue is. Of
course everybody can understand that it is
noble for a man to do what he knows to be
right, in spite of any amount of contumely he
may bring upon himself. But if I am correct
in supposing that the possession of moral
courage would enable him to do so without
caring for that contumely, I should not
sympathise with it at all; on the contrary, the more he
suffered the more I should admire him, if once
convinced that he was acting from a conscientious
motive; which in the case of a man running
a muck amongst the feelings and opinions
of his friends and contemporaries, I am always
too ready to doubt. It is so rare in these days
for any one to be unable to follow his own bent
without a fuss, that one is naturally suspicious,
on hearing of a case of persecution, that the
martyr may have courted the opportunity of
putting his moral courage to the proof. For,
to my distorted vision, moral courage looks
very much like indifference to public opinion,
and though that may in a few rare instances
help a man to be virtuous, it certainly removes
one of the strongest impediments to his being
vicious. Parents and tutors know best,
perhaps, but it always sets my teeth on edge to
hear them holding forth to boys upon the
merits of learning to say No—as if they were
heiresses—and not minding being laughed at.
Some thirty years ago there was a book
with enticing covers, which set forth how one
James Proper used to rebuke those school-
fellows who incited him to trespass out of
bounds and commit other breaches of discipline.
The finger of scorn was pointed at James, but
he wrapped himself up in his virtue and cared
not; indeed, he rather liked being made a
martyr of. Well, I always used to long to
kick James Proper, and almost fear that age
has not deprived me of that yearning. Why,
what would be the use of sending a boy who
was covered with this impenetrable hide of
moral courage to school at all? Surely the
desecration of classic authors and the
manufacture of nonsense verses are but insignificant
items of education compared with the training