The illustrious Barnum once observed that, if a man’s capital consisted of a shilling, one penny of that shilling should be spent in purchasing something, and the remaining eleven-pence should be invested in advertising what was purchased. There was, perhaps, a touch of exaggeration in that great man’s remark, but it was founded on a profound knowledge both of human nature and of the world. Intrinsically nothing is valuable; things are what we make or imagine them. Even the diamond, as a costly commodity, exists on suffrage. If a man cannot persuade his fellow-creatures that he has genius, talent, learning, “’twere all alike as if he had them not.” What Persius asks with a sneer, “Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter?”--is your knowledge nothing, unless some one else know that you are knowing?--a wiser man would ask in all seriousness. Shakespeare was never nearer the truth than when he wrote-- “No man is the lord of anything, Though in and of him there be much consisting, Till he communicates his parts to others; Nor doth he of himself know them for aught, Till he behold them formed in the applause Where they are extended.” And never was a man more mistaken than the old preacher who said to his congregation, “If you have a talent in your napkin, you should take care not to hide it; but if you have no talent, but only a napkin, you should not so flourish your napkin as to create the impression that it is full of talents.” Why, this is just what nine men in ten who court fame have to do. Nature is kind, but seldom profuse. If she really endows a man with what, if trumpeted, would make him famous, the odds are she couples with her gifts pride, modesty, or self-respect, which, to say the least, heavily handicap him in the race for reputation. When she does not endow with the reality, she compensates by bestowing the power of acquiring the credit for it. She is, as a rule, much too thrifty to heap on the same man the keen pleasures of genuine enthusiasm and the sweets of popular applause. An impartial mother, she loves all her children, and divides her favours equally between shams and true men. This Churchill marks in his brutal way; speaking of a certain contemporary, he describes him as endowed with “That low cunning which in fools supplies, And amply too, the place of being wise, Which Nature, kind, indulgent parent, gave To qualify the blockhead for a knave.” But our business is not with knaves and blockheads, but with “gentler cattle,” and the quotation demands an apology.