Page:Early Reminiscences.djvu/411

 VENVOI 343 more will object to my strong prejudices. In youthful days prejudices are unreasonably strong, but become softened in later years ; others will remonstrate at my digressions, yet, if I digress, it is precisely for the sake of avoiding to talk of self. Others, again, will demur at my metaphysical and religious reflections, but it is precisely these which go to build up character and to fashion convictions. They act on the man as the engine does in the steam-packet; it must be mentioned, if the voyage taken is to be described. It is not possible to please all men. Remember the story of the artist who set up his painting in the market-place, with a pot of lampblack by it and a brush, with the request that every passerby who noticed in it a defect in perspective, a crudeness in colour, a failure in grouping, should daub it out. At the end of the day he found that the entire canvas was blackened. An author has to go through some such an ordeal as this. Tot homines tot sententice, and every one, however ignorant, considers himself entitled to criticize and discover faults. I met a gentleman at Cannes one winter in a hotel, who was a charming companion, and an interesting conversationalist; but he could never utter an approbation without qualifying it with a " but," brought out with an explosion like that of a pop-gun. The hotel was all that could be desired, but it was at too great a distance from the shore. The sea was of the most superb depth of blue, but it was so, monotonously ; the Maritime Alps were undoubtedly fine, but they lacked forests of pines to clothe them ; the olive was a vastly valuable tree, but it had to be dressed with the foul rags of Neapolitan lazaroni. Every man insists on the exercise of his privilege to findfault. It is not possible to please all: every one who expresses an opinion lays himself open to contradiction. There was an ancient ordeal that criminals, or supposed criminals, had to undergo, called Running the Gauntlet, in Germany SpiessriVerschldgerei. Two lines of soldiers or servants of justice were drawn up facing one another, each man armed with a rod, a flail or cudgel. At a given signal, the accused was started, and had to run down this lane of excutioners, from each of whom he received a blow. If he emerged from the lane bruised and bleeding, but yet with life in him, he was suffered