this habit of talking always
with reference to ourselves; for every body has a self of their own, to
which they attach as much importance as we to ours, and see all others'
matters small in the comparison. The lady of rank has her castles and
her ancestors--they are the foreground of her picture. There they stood
when she came into being; and there they are still, in all the magnitude
of near perspective; and, if her estimate of their real size be not
corrected by experience and good sense, she expects that others will see
them as large as she does. But that will not be so. The lady of wealth
has gotten her houses and lands in the foreground. These are the larger
features in her landscape; titles and the castles are seen at a smaller
angle. Neither lady will admire the proportions of her neighbor's
drawing, should they chance to discover themselves in each other's
conversation. She, again--whether rich or poor--whose world is her own
domesticity, sees nothing so prominent as the affairs of her nursery or
her household; and perceives not that, in the eyes of others, her
children are a set of diminutives, undistinguishable in the mass of
humanity, in which that they ever existed, or that they cease to exist,
is matter of equal indifference.

It is thus, that each one attributes to the objects around him, not
their true and actual proportion, but a magnitude proportioned to their
nearness to himself. We say not that he draws ill who does so: for, to
each one, things are important, more or less, in proportion to his own
interest in them. But hence is the mischief. We forget that every one
has a self of his own; and that the constant setting forth of ours is,
to others, preposterous, obtrusive, and ridiculous. The painter who
draws a folio in the front of his picture, and a castle in the distance,
properly draws the book the larger of the two: but he must be a fool, if
he therefore thinks the folio is the larger, and expects every body else
to think so too. Yet, nothing wiser are we, when we suffer ourselves to
be perpetually pointing to ourselves, our affairs, and our possessions,
as if they were as interesting to others as they are important to us.

GENTLENESS.

Nothing is so likely to conciliate the affections of the other sex, as a
feeling that woman looks to them for support and guidance. In proportion
as men are themselves superior, they are as accessible to this appeal.
On the contrary, they never feel inte