and I smiled with a consciousness of superiority at the boundlessness of
their vanity, and the narrowness of their views. The limits of the
distinction they had gained seemed to them as wide as the most extended
renown; and the little knowledge their youth had acquired only appeared
to them an excuse for the ignorance and the indolence of maturer years.
Was it to equal these that I was to labour? I felt that I already
surpassed them! Was it to gain their good opinion, or, still worse, that
of their admirers? Alas! I had too long learned to live for myself to
find any happiness in the respect of the idlers I despised.

I left Oxford at the age of twenty-one. I succeeded to the large estates
of my inheritance, and for the first time I felt the vanity so natural to
youth when I went up to London to enjoy the resources of the Capital, and
to display the powers I possessed to revel in whatever those resources
could yield. I found society like the Jewish temple: any one is admitted
into its threshold; none but the chiefs of the institution into its
recesses.

Young, rich, of an ancient and honourable name, pursuing pleasure rather
as a necessary excitement than an occasional occupation, and agreeable to
the associates I drew around me because my profusion contributed to their
enjoyment, and my temper to their amusement--I found myself courted by
many, and avoided by none. I soon discovered that all civility is but
the mask of design. I smiled at the kindness of the fathers who, hearing
that I was talented, and knowing that I was rich, looked to my support in
whatever political side they had espoused. I saw in the notes of the
mothers their anxiety for the establishment of their daughters, and their
respect for my acres; and in the cordiality of the sons who had horses to
sell and rouge-et-noir debts to pay, I detected all that veneration for
my money which implied such contempt for its possessor. By nature