rikes him--"This is beneath my dignity,
after all. Why should I subject myself to miscellaneous criticism? Why
put myself on the verdict of this crowd? Does it become a gentleman of
my standing to fish for their plaudits? What will success amount to, if
attained?" Or else he criticises his own thoughts and meditated forms of
expression, pronounces them tame, trite or feeble, and recoils from
their enunciation as unworthy of his abilities, position and reputation.
The result is the same in either case--he hesitates, blunders, chokes,
and finally stammers out a few sentences and subsides into his seat,
sweating at every pore, red-faced with chagrin, vexed with himself and
every body else on account of his failure, which might not have
occurred, and certainly would not have been so palpable, had his
self-consciousness been less diseased and extravagant.

I have said that the British are not in manner a winning people. Their
self-conceit is the principal reason. They have solid and excellent
qualities, but their self-complacency is exorbitant and unparalleled.
The majority are not content with esteeming Marlborough and Wellington
the greatest Generals and Nelson the first Admiral the world ever saw,
but claim alike supremacy for their countrymen in every field of human
effort. They deem Machinery and Manufactures, Railroads and Steamboats,
essentially British products. They regard Morality and Philanthropy as
in effect peculiar to "the fast anchored isle," and Liberty as an idea
uncomprehended, certainly unrealized, any where else. They are
horror-stricken at the toleration of Slavery in the United States, in
seeming ignorance that our Congress has no power to abolish it and that
their Parliament, which _had_ ample power, refused to exercise it
through generations down to the last quarter of a century. They cannot
even consent to go to Heaven on a road common to other nations, but must
seek admission through a private gate of their own, stoutly maintaining
that their local Church is the very one founded by the Apostles, and
that all others are more or less apostate and schismatic. Other Nations
have their weak points--the French, Glory; the Spaniards, Orthodoxy; the
Yankees, Rapacity; but Bull plunders India and murders Ireland, yet
deems himself the mirror of Beneficence and feeds his self-righteousness
by resolving not to fellowship slaveholders of a different fashion from
himself; he is perpetually fighting and extending