There is a something which appeals to our pity in every _carrière manqué_. The statesman who made one false step, the soldier who at the crisis of his life was out-generalled, the lawyer who began so well but who proved not quite strong enough for the strain he had to bear--we meet them now and then where we should least have expected to find them, the obliterated heroes of the hour, and we say with a kindly sigh, “This man might have had another chance.” But each of these has had his chance; they have _worked up_ to a position and have forfeited it when it has been proved they were in the wrong place; they have gone into the battle of life, and the fortune of war has gone against them; tried by the judgment of that world which is so “cold to all that might have been,” they have been found wanting; they have had to step aside, and make way for abler men than themselves. But up and down the land in remote country parsonages--counting by the hundreds--there are to be found those who have never had, and never will have, any chance at all of showing what stuff is in them--sometimes men of real genius shrivelled, men of noble intellect, its expansion arrested, men fitted to lead and rule, men of force of character and power of mind, who from the day that they entered upon the charge of a rural parish have had never a chance of deliverance from The dull mechanic pacing to and fro, The set grey life and apathetic end. You might as well expect from such as these that they should be able to break away from their surroundings, or fail to be dwarfed and cramped by them, as expect that Robinson Crusoe should develop into a sagacious politician. “Pathos,” did I say? How often have I heard the casual visitor to our wilds exclaim with half-incredulous wonder, “What, _that_ Parkins? Why, he used to walk the streets of Camford like a god! He carried all before him. The younger dons used to say the world was at his feet--a ball that he might kick over what goal he might please to choose. And was that other really the great Dawkins, whose lectures we used to hear of with such envy, we of St. Chad’s College, who had to content ourselves with little Smug’s platitudes? Dawkins! How St. Mary’s used to be crowded when he preached! Old Dr. Stokes used to say Dawkins had too much fire and enthusiasm for Oxbridge. He called him Savonarola, and he meant it for a sneer. And that’s Dawkins! How are the mighty fallen!”