whether
others are not admiring him too. He no more exists in the impression
which 'the fair variety of things' makes upon him, softened and subdued
by habitual contemplation, but in the feverish sense of his own upstart
self-importance. By aiming to fix, he is become the slave of opinion. He
is a tool, a part of a machine that never stands still, and is sick
and giddy with the ceaseless motion. He has no satisfaction but in the
reflection of his own image in the public gaze--but in the repetition of
his own name in the public ear. He himself is mixed up with and spoils
everything. I wonder Buonaparte was not tired of the N. N.'s stuck all
over the Louvre and throughout France. Goldsmith (as we all know) when
in Holland went out into a balcony with some handsome Englishwomen,
and on their being applauded by the spectators, turned round and said
peevishly, 'There are places where I also am admired.' He could not give
the craving appetite of an author's vanity one day's respite. I have
seen a celebrated talker of our own time turn pale and go out of the
room when a showy-looking girl has come into it who for a moment divided
the attention of his hearers.--Infinite are the mortifications of the
bare attempt to emerge from obscurity; numberless the failures;
and greater and more galling still the vicissitudes and tormenting
accompaniments of success--

Whose top to climb
Is certain falling, or so slippery, that
The fear's as bad as falling.

'Would to God,' exclaimed Oliver Cromwell, when he was at any time
thwarted by the Parliament, 'that I had remained by my woodside to tend
a flock of sheep, rather than have been thrust on such a government as
this!' When Buonaparte got into his carriage to proceed on his Russian
expedition, carelessly twirling his glove, and singing the air,
'Malbrook to the war is going,' he did not think of the tumble he has
got since, the shock of which no one could have stood but himself. We
see and hear chiefly of the favourites of Fortune and the Muse, of great
generals, of first-rate actors, of celebrated poets. These are at the
head; we are struck with the glittering eminence on which they stand,
and long to set out on the same tempting career,--not thinking how many
discontented half-pay lieutenants are in vain seeking promotion all
their lives, and obliged to put up with 'the insolence of office,
and the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes'; how many
half-starved strolling