the same enormities, as the most hardened and impudent, only with this difference, that the latter feel no regret for the greatest baseness, and the former are distressed with the least appearance of it, for bashfulness is only modesty in excess; and as a gardener roots out and burns noxious weeds, but in dressing the vine, or the apple, or the olive, is careful not to injure the tree, so the philosopher in eradicating envy, and covetousness, and an immoderate love of pleasure, may cut deep, but in restraining the excess of bashfulness, he must be careful not to eradicate modesty : as those that pull down private houses adjoining to the temples of the gods, prop up such parts as are contiguous to them, so in undermining bashfulness, due regard must be had to adjacent modesty, good-nature, and humanity.

After the excess of every passion, repentance follows, but it overtakes the bashful in the very act. Let the painful sensation be remembered, that like travellers who have fallen in a stony path, or mariners who have been shipwrecked on a particular promontory, they may be on their guard against the same or similar dangers.

This section from Plutarch suggests atten

tion in educating the shamefaced. The plan of education, mentioned by Madam Stael*, without punishments and rewards, without the stimulus of emulation or fear, would be suitable to them.

ARISTOTLE, in his methodical way, enumerates things which occasion shame, and in whose presence it is felt.

Shame is occasioned by what reflects dishonour; as turning back in the day of battle; this is cowardice: refusing to pay debt, or to restore a pledge; this is unjust indulging unlawful pleasures, or the intemperate unseasonable use of such as are lawful; this is want of self-control: deriving profit from little things, and taking them from the poor or the dead, withholding aid from a friend in need, or offering what is inadequate, asking or receiving from one who cannot afford to give, praising a thing, so as to indicate a desire to have it in a gift, persevering to ask what has once been refused; these are symptoms of avarice: to praise one in his presence, to exaggerate the good he has done, and ex

* Germany.

tenuate the evil, to affect concern for his affliction greater than he himself expresses; these savour of flattery: to decline labours and duties which the aged and others less able fulfil; this is effeminacy: praising one's self, promising more than he can perform, assuming credit for what he has not done, upbraiding; these show arrogance and self-conceit, and the least sign or approach to them is unbecoming to be without the fair advantages which equals have attained, especially if it be owing to the want of due exertion, as to be ignorant, through neglect, of what a well bred man ought to know: when one suffers, or has suffered, or is exposed to suffer indignities which he might avert by defending or avenging himself.

Such are the things which occasion 'shame, and it is felt in the presence of those who are respectable, whose good opinion we desire, from whom we have expectations, who are not subject to the same failings, who have a superintendance over us, of all whose judg ment we do not despise: in the presence of rivals, of the envious, of those whom we have offended, of jesters and evil speakers, who tell with addition all the ill they know. Shame is most felt when we must be often under the eye of those who know our faults,

shame, says the proverb, is lodged in the eye; this made Antiphon the poet, when, by order of Dionysius the tyrant, he and others were led out to execution, say to his fellow sufferers. "Why do you cover your faces? Are you afraid that they who see you to-day, "will see you to-morrow?"

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This extract from Aristotle will suggest thoughts to the bashful.

EAGERNESS in a bashful mind is an instrument too sharp for its destined use. Inclinations are at first thwarted and moulded by others, but when independent powers spring up, he must take the government upon himself and impose restraint.

The young man who cannot bear to be censured for want of spirit, and for mean and sbabby things below a gentleman, though his circumstances require an economy to which these epithets are given, that young man is in the broad way which leadeth to destruction. His creditors suffer. He is a burden on his friends, and when they have helped him, they must do it yet again. He has forfeited his claim to just praise by the

D

dread of unjust censure, and whatever fan. tastic idea may be annexed to the honour of a gentleman, he has forfeited the honour of a man, which consists in rendering to all their due.

THE shamefaced delay to fulfil a duty which will cost blushing and embarrassment, and with the vague purpose of fulfilling it afterwards, invent farther delay, till the time be passed. Self-condemned and heartless, they fall into habits of neglect, and sink in torpor: the demon sloth benumbs and chills them.

Are you not ashamed, my young friend, to be nothing and to do nothing?

For sluggard brow, the laurel never grows,
Renown is not the child of indolent repose*.

Shame has involved me in the net of that soul-enfeebling wizard indolence. My tears have watered the seeds of emulation and ambition, but I am not made to excel.

To excel is the lot of few, but with one talent something may be done, and you know

* Castle of Indolence.