other." Youatt speaks of two flocks of Leicester sheep which have been purely bred from the original stock of Mr. Bakewell for more than fifty years. There is not a suspicion existing in the mind of any one at all acquainted with the subject, that the owner of either of them has deviated in any one instance from the pure blood of Mr. Bakewell's flock, and yet the difference between the sheep possessed by these two gentlemen is so great that they have the appearance of being quite different varieties. "We may, in truth," said Voltaire, "be naturally and aptly resembled to a river, all whose waters pass away in perpetual change and flow. It is the same river as to its bed, its banks, its source, its mouth, everything, in short, that is not itself; but changing every moment its water, which constitutes its very being, it has no identity; there is no sameness belonging to the river." Said Sir Kenelm Digby, long before Voltaire, "There is not one drop of the same water in the Thames that ran down by Whitehall yesternight; yet no man will deny but that it is the same river that was in Queen Elizabeth's time, as long as it is supplied from the same common stock, the sea."

Lowell, in one of his critical essays, says that "all men are interested in Montaigne in proportion as all men find more of themselves in him; and all men see but one image in the glass which the greatest of poets holds up to nature,—an image which at once startles and charms with its familiarity." Montaigne himself says, "Nature, that we may not be dejected with the sight of our deformities, has wisely thrust the action of seeing outward." "Know thyself," that Apollo caused to be written on the front of his temple at Delphi, appeared to him contradictory. We are vain of our knowledge, vain of our virtue, vain of everything that pertains to us. Reading La Rochefoucauld's Maxims at twenty, one is a little surprised that the first and longest should be upon self-love; at forty, one is not astonished at the rank and importance it has in the philosopher's system. "In vain," says Xavier de Maistre, "are looking-glasses multiplied around us which reflect light and truth with geometrical exactness. As soon as the rays reach our vision and paint us as we are, self-love slips its deceitful prism between us and our image, and presents a divinity to us. And of all the prisms that have existed since the first that came from the hands of the immortal Newton, none has possessed so powerful a refractive force, or produced such pleasing and lively colors, as the prism of self-love. Now, seeing that ordinary looking-glasses record the truth in vain, and that they cannot make men see their own imperfections, every one being satisfied with his face, what would a moral mirror avail? Few people would look at it, and no one would recognize himself." "Oh, the incomparable contrivance of Nature," exclaims Erasmus, "who has ordered all things in so even a method that wherever she has been less bountiful in her gifts, there she makes it up with a larger dose of self-love, which supplies the former defects, and makes all even." "Could all mankind," says John Norris, "lay claim to that estimate which they pass upon themselves, there would be little or no difference betwixt laps'd and perfect humanity, and God might again review his image with paternal complacency, and still pronounce it good." "Blinded as they are as to their true character by self-love, every man," says Plutarch, "is his own first and chiefest flatterer, prepared therefore to welcome the flatterer from the outside, who only comes confirming the verdict of the flatterer within." It was the habit of Sir Godfrey Kneller to say to his sitter, "Praise me, sir, praise me: how can I throw any animation into your face if you don't choose to animate me?" "I have heard," says Bulwer, in one of his essays, "that when the late Mr. Kean was performing in some city of the United States, he came to the manager at the end of the third act and said, 'I can't go on the stage again, sir, if the pit keeps its hands in its pockets. Such an audience would extinguish Ætna.' The audience being notified by the manager of the determination of the actor, proved hearty enough in its applause. As the favor of the audience rose, so rose the genius of the actor, and the contagion of their own applause redoubled their enjoyment of the excellence it contributed to create." "Vanity," says Pascal, "has taken so firm a hold on the heart of man, that a porter, a hodman, a turnspit, can talk greatly of himself, and is for having his admirers. Philosophers who write of the contempt of glory do yet desire the glory of writing well; and those who read their compositions would not lose the glory of having read them. We are so presumptuous as that we desire to be known to all the world; and even to those who are not to come into the world till we have left it. And, at the same time, we are so little and vain as that the esteem of five or six persons about us is enough to content and amuse us." "We censure others," says Sir Thomas Browne, "but as they disagree from that humor which we fancy laudable in ourselves, and commend others but for that wherein they seem to quadrate and consent with us. So that in conclusion, all is but that we all condemn, self-love." We think ourselves of great importance in the eyes of others, when we are only so in our own. Calmly considering it, what can be more astonishing than vanity in a middle-aged person? Know as much as it is possible for a human being to know in this world, he cannot know enough to justify him in being vain of his knowledge. Good as it is possible for a human being to be, he cannot be good enough to excuse a conceit of his goodness. Yet how common it is for full-grown ignorance to have conceit of wisdom, and for ordinary virtue to assume the airs of saintship. How we shall one day wonder, looking back at the world we have left, at the nearly invisible mites, like ourselves, tossing their heads in pride, and gathering their skirts in self-righteousness, that we were ever as vain and shameless as they, and that the little things of life ever so engrossed us. Alas, to learn and unlearn is our fate; to gather as we climb the hill of life, to scatter as we descend it: empty-handed alike at the end and at the beginning.

"All the world, all that we are, and all that we have, our bodies and our souls, our actions and our sufferings, our conditions at home, our accidents abroad, our many sins, and our seldom virtues," says Jeremy Taylor, "are as so many arguments to make our souls dwell low in the valleys of humility." We are not what we think ourselves, nor are other people what we think them, else this were a different world. We know not ourselves, nor others, nor anything, so well as to avoid misapprehending everything. Our condition is ignorance and humility, and better it were if we kept modestly in our paths. Whatever we do or are, we are of chief importance to ourselves. Northcote said that he often blamed himself for uttering what might be thought harsh things; and that on mentioning this once to Kemble, and saying it sometimes kept him from sleep, after he had been out in company, Kemble replied, "Oh, you need not trouble yourself so much about them; others never think of them afterward." "I see you will not believe it," said Sydney Smith, "but I was once very shy." "Were you, indeed, Mr. Smith? how did you cure yourself?" "Why, it was not very long before I made two very useful discoveries: First, that all mankind were not solely employed in observing me (a belief that all young people have); and next, that shamming was of no