Page:The Daughters of England.djvu/83

72 found out. Their's is not that amiable modesty which arises from a sense of the superiority of others; for to admire our friends, or even our fellow-creatures, is always a pleasurable sensation; while a conviction of our own ignorance of such topics as are generally interesting in good society, carries with it a feeling of disgraceful humiliation, perfectly incompatible with enjoyment. Uneasiness, timidity, and shyness, with an awkward shrinking from every office of responsibility, or post of distinction, are the unavoidable accompaniments of this conviction; and from this cause, how many opportunities of extending our sphere of usefulness are lost! How many opportunities of rational and lawful enjoyment, too, especially if, from a consciousness of our own inferiority, we refuse to associate with persons of better information and more enlightened minds. Our sufferings are then of a twofold nature, arising from a sense of mortification at our loss, and from the fretfulness and irritation of temper which such privations naturally occasion.

It is well, too, if envy does not steal in, to poison the little comfort we might otherwise have left — well if we do not look with evil eye upon the higher attainments of our friends — well if, while we professedly admire, we do not throw out some hint that may tend to diminish their value in the estimation of others.

Thus, there is no end to that culpable want of knowledge, which must be the consequence of an idle or wasted youth. We may, and we necessarily must, learn much in after years by experience, observation, reading, and conversation. But we are then, perhaps, in middle age, only acquiring a bare knowledge of those facts, which ought in by-gone years to have been forming our judgment, fixing our principles, and supplying our minds with intellectual food.

If there is no calculation to be made of the evils arising