with the observation often quoted, that a theatre would soon be deserted, even during the most affecting tragedy, if it were announced to the audience that an execution was on the point of taking place in the neighbouring square. To what a deplorable familiarity with bloodshed must a people have sunk, who could sit at a theatrical exhibition of any kind, while the most intensely affecting event in the whole compass of human endurance was passing on the scaffold at the door!

Farewell.

F. R.

LETTER XIII.

Absorbing Influence of Personal Interests Tendency in some Men to overrate whatever belongs to themselves— Description of an Individual of this Class-An opposite Character.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

It is amusing enough to observe how wholly engrossed the generality of human beings are in their own individual pursuits, and how little interest they feel in what is entirely unconnected with their personal situation. Enter into conversation with them, and they will talk of their families, their business, their fame, or their fortune, but, if you start any topic of a general or abstract nature, they soon let you perceive that, although they may attempt to listen, their thoughts are gone in pursuit of other topics. It is only a few highly-gifted minds in whom the love of knowledge, of truth, and of intellectual exertion, has even a temporary predominance over personal interests.

This absorption of the individual in his own. concerns is of course inconsistent, when extreme, with enlarged views of life and of the world. He looks around from that point only of the social system which he himself occupies, and considers every thing merely in relation to his own position. The description of the views and feelings of a beggar, in a small volume of clever poetry which I lately met with,* may be applied, mutatis mutandis, to almost every other profession :

"The tatter'd wretch, who scrapes his idle tunes,
Through our dull streets, on rainy afternoons;
The lawless nuisance of the king's highway,
Houseless and friendless, wander where he may;
Suspected, spurn'd, unbound by social ties,
With none to mourn or miss him when he dies:
Still, to himself, that vagrant man appears
The central object of revolving spheres,
Not less than he, who sweeps with regal robe,
Half the circumference of the peopled globe.
All seem for him that eye or thought can view-
The ground he treads, and heaven's ethereal blue,
The sheltering hovel he has gain'd from far,
And the faint glimmer of the utmost star;
Nought he regards, by art or nature made,
But as it serves his pleasure or his trade :

* Essays in Rhyme, by Jane Taylor.

Mankind, should he define them, this the sense—
Things bearing purses-purses yielding pence;
The ranging doors that meet his practis'd eye,.
But places seem where he may knock and try;
Where'er he stands, creation's dearest spot,
For what were all to him if he were not ?"

This consideration of every thing in relation to self, may be granted to be natural and unavoidable, but it may be reasonably insisted, after this ample concession, that we should be content with viewing objects ourselves in the light of our own importance, without endeavouring to make other people see them under the same peculiar illumination. We are apt to exaggerate the magnitude and value of every thing to which we devote great attention, were it for no other reason than this-that great attention to any thing necessarily involves, while it lasts, a forgetfulness of other claims and considerations. It is no wonder, therefore, that we are led to exaggerate the importance of whatever is our own, or affects ourselves; but to expect that our concerns should loom as large to other people, is weak, and often ludiIt may be all very well that the homely birds which haunt the green and the pond before our cottage, and occasionally salute the ear

crous.

with their sibilations, should assume in our eyes the size and stateliness of swans: only we should not insist on our neighbours entertaining the same peculiar ideas of form, grace, and magnitude.

One of my friends is very unreasonable in this respect. He pertinaciously compels every body to see things as he does; and, as he has the happy faculty of shedding a lustre not its own on every object the instant it becomes his property, he may be said to be constantly engaged in dazzling the eyes of his acquaintance by the splendour of his possessions. He takes you through his house and grounds, shows you all from the dormitory to the dovecote, launches out into separate eulogiums on every thing he shows, appeals to your good taste, and extorts your admiration. His His crops are allowed to be the best in the whole country; his horses have been pronounced by the most knowing jockies to be unrivalled; the prospect from his window was lately seen by a traveller, who had made the picturesque tour of the world, and declared to be unique. After having drawn from your reluctant lips what he construes into an acquiescence in the justness of his praises,