There is a seeming affectation of literary paternity in what Chateaubriand writes of the death of Byron,—as though it were Terah and Haran, with a difference. “I preceded him in life; he preceded me in death. He was summoned before his time. My number came before his, and yet his was drawn first from the urn. It was Childe Harold who ought to have remained.” _THE MOTE AND THE BEAM._ ST. MATTHEW vii. 5. As easy is it to discern the mote in a brother’s eye as to discern the face of the sky. Hypocrite is the term by which the facile discerner in either case is divinely stigmatised; in the one instance, because with all his discernment he cannot read the signs of the times; in the other, because with all his insight and microscopic nicety of perception, and exceptionally developed faculty of vision, he yet considers not the beam that is in his own eye. With our Lord’s words concerning the mote and the beam, Archbishop Trench bids us compare the Chinese proverb, “Sweep away the snow from thine own door, and heed not the frost upon thy neighbour’s tiles.” The Greek and Latin classics are not wanting in various readings of the same theme. Demosthenes meant much the same thing when he said that we must beware of austerely scrutinizing the actions of others, unless first we are conscious of having acquitted ourselves aright: “οὐ γὰρ ἐστι πικρῶς ἐξετάσαι τι πέπρακται τοῖς ἀλλοῖς, ἀν μὴ παῤ ὑμῶν ἀυτῶν πρῶτον ὑπάρξη τὰ δέοντα.” “Man is blind to his own faults, but keen-sighted to perceive those of others,” is a Latin adage: “Vitiis suis pervidendis cæcus est homo, in alienis perspicax.” “Is it never your way to look at yourself when you are abusing another?” is a question in Plautus: “Non soles respicere te, cum dicas injuste alteri?” Cicero pronounces it to be of the nature of folly to see the faults of others, and to forget one’s own: “Proprium est stultitiæ aliorum vitia cernere, oblivisci suorum.” Horace shrewdly submits that the man who is desirous that his friends should not take offence at his own protuberances, will “ignore” that friend’s warts: “Qui, ne tuberibus propriis offendat amicum, Postulat, ignoscat verrucis illius.” And at least as pointed and piquant is the passage beginning, “Quum tua pervideas oculis male lippus inunctis, Cur in amicorum vitiis tam cernis acutum,” etc. The query Plautus puts, “How is it that no man tries to search into himself, but each fixes his eyes on the wallet of the one who goes before him?” is in allusion to the fable of Jupiter having loaded men with a couple of wallets; the one, filled with our own vices, being slung at our backs, “Propriis repletam vitiis post tergum dedit;” the other, heavy with our neighbour’s faults, hung in front, “Alienis ante pectus suspendit gravem.”