17 



PRIDE AND VANITY. 



These qualities are frequently regarded as iden- 

 tical ; in my opinion, they are widely remote. Pride 

 is of cold imperious character, and not unfrequently 

 allied to mental power. Vanity is a weak effeminate 

 passion, and often connected with imbecility. Pride 

 repels — vanity labours to attract. Pride is an eagle 

 that gazes at the sun, and disdains earthly objects — 

 vanity is a jackdaw, arrayed in borrowed plumes, 

 and courting the admiration of mankind. It was 

 vanity, and not pride, that caused Napoleon to pre- 

 sent his hand to the kiss of his mother, on meeting 

 her in the gardens of Malmaison, soon after his ele- 

 vation to the throne. — Pride, from its conscious dig- 

 nity, would either have waived the ceremony or passed 

 by disdainfully. It was pride that occasioned the 

 poet Rousseau to repulse with brutality his venerable 

 father, when about to embrace him at the door of the 

 opera-house at Paris, after the successful performance 

 of one of his pieces. Vanity is allied to contempt — 

 pride to hatred. Pride is opposed to benevolence — 

 vanity to sincerity. A proud man is concentrated 

 in his own thoughts — lives immured in the Bastille 

 of his prej udices and feelings, and exhibits the callo- 

 sity of the tortoise, 



" As tho' he were author of himself, 

 And owned no other kin/' 



A vain man possesses a soft seductive pliability — 

 becomes all things to all men — " and crooks the preg- 

 nant hinges of the knee that thrift may follow fawn- 

 ing.'' Vanity is sometimes co-existent with amiability 

 — that is loosely and popularly speaking : and it was 

 for this purpose that it attracted the admiration of 

 that apostle of wisdom and philanthropy, Benjamin 

 Franklin. 



A Frenchman is vain, but seldom proud. He assi- 

 duously lays himself out to please, and strives by all 

 possible expedients to attract the applauses of a friend, 

 but he will never afterwards cut that friend in the 



VOL. IV. — 1834. c 



