Page:The Daughters of England.djvu/260

Rh the vain. Excessive vanity, excites a nervous trembling apprehension in the young candidate for public favour, which is often most erroneously supposed to arise from a low estimate of self. Nor is it impossible that it should arise from this cause, and be the consequence of vanity still; for, if I may use the expression, there is a vanity above par, and another vanity below it—there is a vanity which looks eagerly for homage, believing it to be a right; there is another which scarcely ventures into the field of competition, convinced of its inadequacy to succeed, but which nevertheless, retires with a feeling of sullenness and depression, not much allied to genuine humility. It is that state of vacillation between the excessive pleasure which admiration would afford if obtained, and the excessive pain which anything approaching to ridicule or contempt would occasion, that often imparts to the manners of the young, a blushing nervous kind of hesitation and backwardness, miscalled timidity. The timidity of modest feeling escapes from notice, and is happy; that of vanity escapes, and is piqued and miserable. She who suffers from the timidity of vanity, shrinks from society higher than herself, not so much from fear, as from jealousy of being outshone. The simple-hearted woman, desirous of improvement, esteems it a privilege to go into the company of her superiors, for the sake of what she may learn from those who are better informed, or more estimable, than herself.

In contemplating the nature and effects of artifice, or rather that system of practising upon others which I have endeavoured to describe, and in reflecting upon the state of mind which this species of practising indicates, we arrive at a more clear and decided idea of integrity, as directly opposed to this system, than we can by any other process of thought. There is in fact no means of giving a positive definition of integrity, so as to make it fully understood.