knowledge, we must be one of two sects,--a politician or a
philosopher. My time was not yet arrived for the latter, so I
resolved to become the former; but this was denied me, for my vanity
had assumed a different shape. It is true that I cared no longer for
the reputation women can bestow; but I was eager for the applause of
men, and I did not like the long labour necessary to attain it. I
wished to make a short road to my object, and I eagerly followed every
turn but the right one, in the hopes of its leading me sooner to my
goal.

The great characteristic of a vain man in contradistinction to an
ambitious man, his eternal obstacle to a high and honourable fame, is
this: he requires for any expenditure of trouble too speedy a reward;
he cannot wait for years, and climb, step by step, to a lofty object;
whatever he attempts, he must seize at a single grasp. Added to this,
he is incapable of an exclusive attention to one end; the universality
of his cravings is not contented, unless it devours all; and thus he
is perpetually doomed to fritter away his energies by grasping at the
trifling baubles within his reach, and in gathering the worthless
fruit which a single sun can mature.

This, then, was my fault, and the cause of my failure. I could not
give myself up to finance, nor puzzle through the intricacies of
commerce: even the common parliamentary drudgeries of constant
attendance and late hours were insupportable to me; and so after two
or three "splendid orations," as my friends termed them, I was
satisfied with the puffs of the pamphleteers and closed my political
career. I was now, then, the wit and the conversationalist. With my
fluency of speech and variety of information, these were easy
distinctions; and the popularity of a dinner-table or the approbation