826 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and Alfred Tennyson ; look at the parodying power of the two Smiths 

 in " Rejected Addresses " ; look at the Caracci, the Rossettis, the Her- 

 schels, and then say whether even minute touches of taste and senti- 

 ment do not come out alike in brothers and sisters. Almost every- 

 body who meets brothers or sisters or cousins of his own after a long 

 separation (when use has not dulled his apprehension of the facts) must 

 have noticed, with mingled amusement and dissatisfaction, in ten 

 thousand little ways and sayings how very closely he and they resem- 

 ble one another. Sometimes the very catchwords and phrases they 

 use, their pet aversions and their pet sympathies, turn out at every 

 twist of life to be absurdly identical. One may even be made aware 

 of one's own unsuspected and unobtrusive failings by observing them, 

 as in a mirror, in the minds of one's relations, like King George's mid- 

 dy in Mr. Gilbert's story, who meets himself on an enchanted island, 

 and considers his double the most disagreeable fellow he ever came 

 across. 



Why is it, then, that most people won't admit their own essential 

 unity and identity of character with their brothers and their sisters, 

 their cousins and their aunts ? Vanity, vanity, pure human vanity, is 

 at the bottom of all their violent reluctance. Every man flatters him- 

 self at heart that he possesses an immense number of admirable traits 

 not to be found in any other and inferior members of his own family. 

 Those spurious imitations may. indeed resemble him somewhat in the 

 rough, as coarse pottery resembles egg-shell porcelain ; but they lack 

 that delicacy, that refinement, that native grace and finishing touch 

 of character which distinguish Himself, the cream and flower of his en- 

 tire kindred, from all the rest of a doubtless worthy but very inferior 

 family. I fancy I see you now — you, even you, ray excellent critic — 

 with that graceful cynical smile of yours playing lambent upon your 

 intellectual upper lip, while you loll at your ease in your club arm- 

 chair, and murmur to yourself complacently as you read, " The idea of 

 identifying me with my brother Tom, for instance ! Me, a cultivated, 

 intelligent university man, with that stolid, stupid Philistine sugar- 

 broker ! If only I'd his wealth, how differently I'd use it ! The no- 

 tion's simply too ridiculous ! Why, I am worth a dozen of him ! " My 

 dear sir, believe me, at this very moment your brother Tom, glancing 

 hastily through the pages of the present paper in an interval of relaxa- 

 tion on his way home by Metropolitan Railway from his lair in the 

 city, is observing with a corresponding calm smile of superiority to 

 himself, " Ila, ha, what an absurd idea of this magazine fellow, to tell 

 me I'm no lietter than my brother Jack, that briefless barrister ! Jack, 

 indeed, in the name of all that's ridiculous ! If only, now, I'd had his 

 advantages and his education — sent to Rugby and Oxford for the best 

 years of his life, while I was stuck at seventeen into a broker's office to 

 shift for myself and pick up my own living ! And yet, what has my na- 

 tive talent and industry enabled me to do ? Here am I at barely fifty a 



