thought. The man of genius is poor; the rich man is not a lord: the lord wants to be a king: the king is uneasy to be a tyrant or a God. Yet he alone, who could claim this last character upon earth, gave his life a ransom for others! The dwarf in the romance, who saw the shadows of the fairest and the mightiest among the sons of men pass before him, that he might assume the shape he liked best, had only his choice of wealth, or beauty, or valour, or power. But could he have clutched them all, and melted them into one essence of pride, the triumph would not have been lasting. Could vanity take all pomp and power to itself, could it, like the rainbow, span the earth, and seem to prop the heavens, after all it would be but the wonder of the ignorant, the pageant of a moment. The fool who dreams. that he is great should first forget that he is a man, and before he thinks of being proud, should pray to be mad. The only great man in modern times, that is, the only man who rose in deeds and fame to the level of antiquity, who might turn his gaze upon himself and wonder at his height, for on him all eyes were fixed as his majestic stature towered above thrones and monuments of renown, died the other day in exile, and in lingering agony; and we still see fellows strutting about the streets, and fancying they are something! Personal vanity is incompatible with the great and the ideal. He who has not seen or thought or read of something finer than himself, has seen or read or thought little; and he who has, will I do not speak of poverty as an absolute evil; though when accompanied with luxurious habits and vanity, it is a great one. Even hardships and privations have their use, and give strength and endurance. Labour renders ease delightful-hunger is the best sauce. The peasant, who at noon rests from his weary task under a hawthorn hedge, and eats his slice of coarse bread and cheese or rusty bacon, enjoys more real luxury than the prince with pampered, listless appetite under a canopy of state. Why then does the mind of man pity the former, and envy the latter? It is because the imagination changes places with others in situation only, not in feeling; and in fancying ourselves the peasant, we revolt at his homely fare, from not being possessed of his gross taste or keen appetite, while in thinking of the prince, we suppose ourselves to sit down to his delicate viands and sumptuous board, with a relish unabated by long habit and vicious excess. I am not sure whether Mandeville has not given the same answer to this hackneyed question. Hence not be always looking in the glass of his own vanity. poets, artists, and men of genius in general are seldom coxcombs, but often slovens; for they find something out of themselves better worth studying than their own persons. They have an imaginary standard in their minds, with which ordinary features (even their own) will not bear a comparison, and they turn their thoughts another way. If a man had a face like one of Raphael's or Titian's heads, he might be proud of it, but not else; and even then, he would be stared at as a non-descript by "the universal English nation." Few persons who have seen the Antinous or the Theseus will be much charmed with their own beauty or symmetry; nor will those who understand the costume of the antique or Vandyke's dresses, spend much time in decking themselves out in all the deformity of the prevailing fashion. A coxcomb is his own lay-figure, for want of any better models to employ his time and imagination upon. There is an inverted sort of pride, the reverse of that egotism that has been above described, aud which, because it cannot be every thing, is dissatisfied with every thing. A person who is liable to this infirmity "thinks nothing done, while any thing remains to be done." The sanguine egotist prides himself on what he can do or possesses; the morbid egotist despises himself for what he wants, and is ever going out of his way to attempt hopeless and impossible tasks. The effect in either case is not at all owing to reason, but to temperament. The one is as easily depressed by what mortifies his latent ambition, as the other is elated by what flatters his immediate vanity. There are persons whom no success, no advantages, no applause can satisfy; for they dwell only on failure and defeat. They constantly "forget the things that are behind, and press forward to the things that are before." The greatest and most decided acquisitions would not indemnify them for the smallest deficiency. They beyond the old motto-Aut Cæsar, aut nihil—they not only want to be at the head of whatever they undertake, but if they succeed in that, they immediately want to be at the head of something else, no matter how gross or trivial. The charm that rivets their affections is not the importance or reputation annexed to the new Fursuit, but its novelty or difficulty. That must be a wonderful accomplishment indeed, which baffles their skill-nothing is with them of any value but as it gives scope to their restless activity of mind, their craving after an uneasy and importunate state of excitement. To them the pursuit is every thing, the possession nothing. I have known persons of this stamp, who, with every reason to be satisfied with their success in life, and with the opinion entertained of them by others, despised themselves because they could not do something which they were not bound to do, and which, if they could have done it, would not have added one jot to their respectability, either in their own eyes or those of any one else, the very insignificance of the attainment irritating their impatience, for it is the humour of such disposi tions to argue,"If they cannot succeed in what is trifling and contemptible, how should they succeed in any thing else?" If they could make the circuit of the arts and sciences and master them all, they would take to some mechanical exercise, and if they failed, be as discontented as ever. All that they can do vanishes out of sight the moment it is within their grasp, and "nothing is, but what is not." A poet of this description is ambitious of the thews and muscles of a prize-fighter, and thinks himself nothing without them. A prose-writer would be a fine tennis-player, and is thrown into despair because he is not one, without considering that it requires a whole life devoted to the game to excel in it; and that, even if he could dispense with this apprenticeship, he would still be just as much bound to excel in rope-dancing, or horsemanship, or playing at cup and ball like the Indian jugglers, all which is impossible. This feeling is a strange mixture of modesty and pride. We think nothing of what we are, because we cannot be every thing with a wish. Goldsmith was even jealous of beauty in the other sex, and a si. milar character is attributed to Wharton by Pope: "Though listening senates hung on all he spoke, Players are for going into the church-officers in the army turn. players. For myself, do what I might, I should think myself a poor creature unless I could beat a boy of ten years old at chuck. farthing, or an elderly gentlewoman at piquet! The extreme of fastidious discontent and repining is as bad as that of over-weening presumption. We ought to be satisfied if we have succeeded in any one thing, or with having done our best. Any thing more is for health and amusement, and should be resorted to as a source of pleasure, not of fretful impatience, and endless, petty, self-imposed mortification. Perhaps the jealous, uneasy temperament is most favourable to continued exertion and improvement, if it does not lead us to fritter away attention on too many pursuits. By looking out of ourselves, we gain knowledge: by being little satisfied with what we have done, we are less apt to sink into indolence and security. To conclude with a piece of egotism: I never begin one of these Essays with a consciousness of having written a line before; and endeavour to do my best, because I seem hitherto to have done nothing! ESSAY XVI. On the Regal Character. THIS is a subject exceedingly curious, and worth explaining. In writing a criticism, I hope I shall not be accused for intending a libel. Kings are remarkable for long memories in the merest trifles. They never forget a face or person they have once seen, nor an anecdote they have been told of any one they know. Whatever differences of character or understanding they manifest in other respects, they all possess what Dr. Spurzheim would call the or gan of individuality, or the power of recollecting particular local circumstances, nearly in the same degree; though I shall attempt to account for it without recurring to his system. This kind of personal memory is the natural effect of that self-importance which makes them attach a correspondent significance to all that comes in contact with themselves. Nothing can be a matter of indifference to a King, that happens to a King. That intense consciousness of their lofty identity, which never quits them, extends to whatever falls under their immediate cognizance. It is the glare of Majesty reflected from their own persons on the persons of those about them, that fixes their attention; and it is the same false lustre that makes them blind and insensible to all that lies beyond that narrow sphere. My Lord," said an English King to one of his courtiers, “I have seen you in that coat before with different buttons"-to the astonishment of the Noble Peer. There was nothing wonderful in it. It was the habitual jealousy of the Sovereign of the respect due to him, that made him regard with lynx-eyed watchfulness even the accidental change of dress in one of his favourites. The least diminution of glossy splen dour in a birth-day suit, considered as a mark of slackened duty or waning loyalty, would expose it, tarnished and threadbare, to |