themselves upon your attention and your feeling as they affect yourself.
And apart from anything like egotism, or like vain self-conceit, it is
probable that you may know that a great deal depends upon your exertion
and your life. There are those at home who would fare but poorly, if you
were just now to die. There are those who must rise with you, if you
rise, and sink with you, if you sink. Does it sometimes suddenly strike
you, what a little object you are, to have so much depending on you?
Vaguely, in your thinking and feeling, you add your circumstances
and your lot to your personality; and these make up an object of
considerable extension. You do so with other people as well as with
yourself. You have all their belongings as a background to the picture
of them which you have in your mind; and they look very little when
you see them in fact, because you see them without these belongings.
I remember, when a boy, how disappointed I was at first seeing the
Archbishop of Canterbury. It was Archbishop Howley. There he was,
a slender, pale old gentleman, sitting in an arm-chair at a public
meeting. I was chiefly disappointed, because there was _so little_ of
him. There was just the human being. There was no background of grand
accessories. The idea of the Primate of England which I had in some
confused manner in my mind included a vision of the venerable towers of
Lambeth,--of a long array of solemn predecessors, from Thomas à Becket
downwards,--of great historical occasions on which the Archbishop of
Canterbury had been a prominent figure; and in some way I fancied,
vaguely, that you would see the primate surrounded by all these things.
You remember the Highlander in "Waverley," who was much mortified when
his chief came to meet an English guest, unattended by any retinue, and
who exclaimed, in consternation and sorrow, "He has come without his
tail!" Even such was my early feeling. You understand later that
associations are not visible, and that they do not add to a man's
extension in space. But (to go back) you do, as regards yourself, what