re
suffering from the daily and hourly pressure of the sacrifices you have
imprudently made for them? Believe me, there can be no peace or
happiness in domestic life without a _bien entendu_ self-love, which
will be found by intelligent experience to be a preservative from
selfishness, instead of a manifestation of it.

From all that I have already said, you will, I hope, infer that I am not
likely to recommend any extravagant social sacrifices, or to bring you
in guilty of selfishness for actions not really deserving of the name.
Indeed, I have said so much on the other side, that I may now have some
difficulty in proving that, while defending self-love, I have not been
defending you. We must therefore go back to my former definition of
selfishness--namely, a seeking for ourselves that which is not our real
good, to the neglect of all consideration for that which is the real
good of others. This is viewing the subject _an grand_,--a very general
definition, indeed, but not a vague one, for all the following
illustrations from the minor details of life may clearly be referred
under this head.

These are the sort of illustrations I always prefer--they come home so
much more readily to the heart and mind. Will not some of the following
come home to you? The indulgence of your indolence by sending a tired
person on a message when you are very well able to go yourself--sending
a servant away from her work which she has to finish within a certain
time--keeping your maid standing to bestow much more than needful
decoration on your dress, hair, &c., at a time when she is weak or
tired--driving one way for your own mere amusement, when it is a real
inconvenience to your companion not to go another--expressing or acting
on a disinclination to accompany your friend or sister when she cannot
go alone--refusing to give up a book that is always within your reach to
another who may have only this opportunity of reading it--walking too
far or too fast, to the serious annoyance of a tired or delicate
companion--refusing, or only consenting with ill-humour, to write a
letter, or to do a piece of work, or to entertain a visitor, or to pay a
visit, when the person whose more immediate business it is, has, from
want of time, and not from idleness or laziness, no power to do what she
requests of you--dwelling on all the details of a painful subject, for
the mere purpose of giving vent to and thus relieving your own feelings,
though it may