person, and my mother said that my good looks came from her. So the
honest pair saw in their eldest son the union of their own
attractions, and thought they were making much of themselves when they
lavished their caresses upon me. They had another son, poor Arthur,--
I think I see him now! He was a shy, quiet, subdued boy, of a very
plain personal appearance. My father and mother were vain, showy,
ambitious people of the world, and they were as ashamed of my brother
as they were proud of myself. However, he afterwards entered the army
and distinguished himself highly. He died in battle, leaving an only
daughter, who married, as you know, a nobleman of high rank. Her
subsequent fate it is now needless to relate.

Petted and pampered from my childhood, I grew up with a profound
belief in my own excellences, and a feverish and irritating desire to
impress every one who came in my way with the same idea. There is a
sentence in Sir William Temple, which I have often thought of with a
painful conviction of its truth: "A restlessness in men's minds to be
something they are not, and to have something they have not, is the
root of all immorality." [And of all good.--AUTHOR.] At school, I
was confessedly the cleverest boy in my remove; and, what I valued
equally as much, I was the best cricketer of the best eleven. Here,
then, you will say my vanity was satisfied,--no such thing! There was
a boy who shared my room, and was next me in the school; we were,
therefore, always thrown together. He was a great stupid, lubberly
cub, equally ridiculed by the masters and disliked by the boys. Will
you believe that this individual was the express and almost sole
object of my envy? He was more than my rival, he was my superior; and
I hated him with all the unleavened bitterness of my soul.

I have said he was my superior: it was in one thing. He could balance