things which would be
personally harmless, on the ground of their being injurious to others.

This part of the subject is, however, of less importance for our present
consideration, as from your youth and inexperience your example cannot
yet exercise much influence on those around you.

Let us therefore return to the more personal part of the subject,
namely, the effect produced on your own mind. I have spoken of feminine
"failings:" I should, however, be inclined to apply a stronger term to
the first that I am about to notice--the love of admiration, considering
how closely it must ever be connected with the fatal vice of envy. She
who has an earnest craving for general admiration for herself, is
exposed to a strong temptation to regret the bestowal of any admiration
on another. She has an instinctive exactness in her account of receipt
and expenditure; she calculates almost unconsciously that the time and
attention and interest excited by the attractive powers of others is so
much homage subtracted from her own. That beautiful aphorism, "The human
heart is like heaven--the more angels the more room for them," is to
such persons as unintelligible in its loving spirit as in its wonderful
philosophic truth. Their craving is insatiable, once it has become
habitual, and their appetite is increased and stimulated, instead of
being appeased, by the anxiously-sought-for nourishment.

These observations can only strictly apply to the fatal desire for
general admiration. As long as the approbation only of the wise and good
is our object, it is not so much that there are fewer opportunities of
exciting the feeling of envy at this approbation being granted to
others; there is, further, an instinctive feeling of its incompatibility
with the very object we are aiming at. The case is altogether different
when we seek to attract those whose admiration may be won by qualities
quite different from any connected with moral excellence. There is here
no restraint on our evil feelings: and when we cannot equal the
accomplishments, the beauty, and the graces of another, we may possibly
be tempted to envy, and, still further, to depreciate, those of the
hated rival--perhaps, worse than all, may be tempted to seek to attract
attention by means less simple and less obvious. If the receiving of
admiration be injurious to the mind, what must the seeking for it be!
"The flirt of many seasons" loses all mental perceptions of refinement
by long p