No man, avers Sir Thomas Browne, can justly censure or condemn another; because, in fact, no man truly knows another. “This I perceive in myself; for I am in the dark to all the world, and my nearest friends behold me but in a cloud.... Further, no man can judge another, because no man knows himself.” In a former section of this his profession of faith, this good physician warns those who, upon a rigid application of the law, sentence Solomon unto damnation,[19] that they condemn not only him, but themselves, and the whole world; “for, by the letter and written word of God, we are without exception in the state of death: but there is a prerogative of God, and an arbitrary pleasure above the letter of His own law, by which alone we can pretend unto salvation, and through which Solomon might be as easily saved as those who condemn him.” The Vicar of Gravenhurst, in his position of parish priest, owns himself compelled to confess that the best people are not the best in every relation of life, and the worst not bad in every relation of life; so that, with experience, he finds himself growing lenient in his blame, if also reticent in his praise. “Again and again I say to myself that only the Omniscient can be the equitable judge of human beings—so complicated are our virtues with our failings, and so many are the hidden virtues, as well as hidden vices, of our fellow-men.” If judge at all we dare, and do, be it in the spirit and to the letter of Wordsworth’s counsel:— “From all rash censure be the mind kept free; He only judges right who weighs, compares, And, in the sternest sentence which his voice Pronounces, ne’er abandons Charity.” Well and wisely said La Bruyère, that “La règle de Descartes, qui ne veut pas que l’on décide sur les moindres vérités avant qu’elles soient connues clairement et distinctement, est assez belle et assez juste pour devoir s’étendu au jugement que l’on fait des personnes.” Real character, as William Hazlitt says, is not one thing, but a thousand things: actual qualities do not conform to any factitious standard in the mind, but rest upon their own truth and nature. “The dull stupor under which we labour in respect of those whom we have the greatest opportunities of inspecting nearly, we should do well to imitate, before we give extreme and uncharitable verdicts against those whom we only see in passing, or at a distance.” “Well—after all— What know we of the secret of a man? His nerves were wrong. What ails us; who are sound, That we should mimic this raw fool, the world, Which charts us all in its coarse blacks or whites, As ruthless as a baby with a worm, As cruel as a schoolboy ere he grows To pity—more from ignorance than will.”