which she evinced as to
whether she sold her goods or not. While all the rest of her tribe were
fawning, cringing, flattering, and importuning, she sat there like a
statue, but a statue of a most perfect order. Nor was this indifference
and apathy of her manner thrown away on the purchasers who crowded
towards the Ghetto. It stood her in better stead than the most manifest
anxiety could have done; it placed her apart from that detestable crowd.
I observed many persons stop and make purchases of her on whom all
importunity would have been thrown away. There was not one of the buyers
who did not look back with hurried gaze at that pale and glorious face,
which did not even glow with the least tinge of animation at the
admiration which she excited. She sold her stock in trade, changed her
money, with the same entire absence of interest in her occupation.
Carriages turning the corner suddenly where her fruit-stall was placed,
sometimes almost grazed it and overthrew all its contents; but even this
circumstance did not appear to awaken any interest in her mind; she only
stooped down to pick up one or two of the peaches which had been shaken
off by the jar, quietly moved her stall a little nearer the wall, and
then folded her arms again in the same contemptuous manner.

Strange, indeed, but it ever is so; the world cares most for those who
appear to treat it with contempt and to be indifferent to its petty
interests. Be a slave to the world, and it will impose the heaviest
burdens upon you; it will be the hardest of all taskmasters; but, on the
other hand, drive it before you, and it will obey almost every impulse
of the determined. In this country, where individualism and idiosyncracy
are now so rare, the very deference which the whole of constituted
society pays to the requirements of the majority, only renders the
exceptional case more rare and prized. We unconsciously admire those
who, instead of seeking to be guided by the opinions of others, endeavor
to direct them, and who, forming their own standard of judgment, keep
themselves aloof from all fluctuations of indecision and weakness.

I had been commissioned to purchase two flounces of the handsomest lace,
and had made two unsuccessful expeditions to the Ghetto in search of it,
ransacking all the shops and listening to an immeasurable amount of
falsehood; but as I was soon to leave Rome, I did not wish to do so with
my commission unfulfilled, and resolved to make anot