Væ victis! to the unsuccessful aspirant, whether it be for honours, a pass, a post, or for love. No one really pities him. He who droops on the way and falls short in his stride is passed by, and the triumphant reach the goal amid the plaudits of the crowd. Who cares to console a failure? to reconstruct a ruined cloud-tower? to follow after a fading rainbow? Væ victis! and let the pale illusions of a dead hope lie where they have fallen! The poor fellow was rejected, was he? Well, he really ought to have been more sure of success before he made the effort! Perhaps he was led on, as you say; but even so, this does not excuse him, nor in any way affect the principle of quasi-certainty before the attempt. When you hazard a great stake, you ought at least to know how to throw the dice, and to be sure that you have counted your cards. It is no use rushing darkly into enterprises for which one has not the material; and to offer one’s self for a place, whether of love or honour, without having taken pains to measure one’s strength against those forces which oppose, is to be more rash than brave, and more foolish than energetic. To be sure, no one can have who does not try. That is true for itself. But it none the more softens the verdict of the world for him who has failed, nor deadens the echo of the cry raised against him. If we do not try, we cannot get; but woe to those who try—and fail! Væ victis! also to the stupid, to the poor, to all born conquered by fate even before they have begun to strive with fortune—who are thrust into the battle unlearned and heavily weighted or ever the lists are set. Who pities the dunce? Who cares to realise all the days and hours of hopeless endeavour to get those facts, that task, rooted in the sluggish brain? Is it his fault, poor dunce, that the atoms are slow to move? the nervous fluid insufficient to stir? the blood too thick to run or too poor to animate? He does his best; but as a schoolboy he gets flogged, as well as over-tasked; as a man he gets distanced, and perhaps ruined, unless he has the luck of hereditary bread with butter superadded. But what is not his fault, is nevertheless accounted to him for blame; and because he is a dunce, he has recorded against him the sentence of disfavour.