struggling for notoriety; and I declare it was pitiful to behold their entrance. I remarked one in particular, who evidently thought that the eyes of the whole meeting were fixed upon himself; and that as he walked in everybody was turning to his neighbour, and saying with agitation, See, that's Snooks !' His whole gait and deportment testified that he felt that two or three thousand eyes were burning him up: you saw it in the way he walked to his place, in the way he sat down, in the way he then looked about him. If any one had tried to get up three cheers for Snooks, Snooks would not have known that he was being made a fool of. He would have accepted the incense of fame as justly his due. There once was a man who entered the Edinburgh theatre at the same instant with Sir Walter Scott. The audience cheered lustily; and while Sir Walter modestly took his seat, as though unaware that those cheers were to welcome the Great Magician, the other man advanced with dignity to the front of the box, and bowed in acknowledgment of the popular applause. This of course was but a little outburst of the great tide of vain self-estimation which the man had cherished within his breast for years. Let it be said here, that an affected unconsciousness of the presence of a multitude of people is as offensive an exhibition of self-consciousness as any that is possible. Entire naturalness, and a just sense of a man's personal insignificance,

will produce the right deportment.

It is very

irritating to see some clergymen walk into church to begin the service. They come in, with eyes affectedly cast down, and go to their place without ever looking up, and rise and begin without one glance at the congregation. To stare about them as some clergymen do, in a free and easy manner, befits not the solemnity of the place and the worship; but the other is the worse thing. In a few cases it proceeds from modesty in the majority from intolerable self-conceit. The man who keeps his eyes downcast in that affected

manner fancies that every

There is an insufferable

body is looking at him. self-consciousness about him; and he is much more keenly aware of the presence of other people than the man who does what is natural, and looks at the people to whom he is speaking. It is not natural nor rational to speak to one human being with your eyes fixed on the ground; and neither is it natural or rational to speak to a thousand. And I think that the preacher who feels in his heart that he is neither wiser nor better than his fellow sinners to whom he is to preach, and that the advices he addresses to them are addressed quite as solemnly to himself, will assume no conceited airs of elevation above them, but will unconsciously wear the demeanour of any sincere worshipper, somewhat deepened in solemnity by the remembrance of his heavy personal responsibility in leading the congregation's worship; but

assuredly and entirely free from the vulgar conceit which may be fostered in a vulgar mind by the reflection, 'Now everybody is looking at me!' I have seen, I regret to say, various distinguished preachers whose pulpit demeanour was made to me inexpressibly offensive by this taint of self-consciousness. And I have seen some, with half the talent, who made upon me an impression a thousand-fold deeper than ever was made by the most brilliant eloquence; because the simple earnestness of their manner said to every heart, Now, I am not thinking in the least about myself, or about what you may think of me: my sole desire is to impress on your hearts these truths I speak, which I believe will concern us all for ever!' I have heard great preachers, after hearing whom you could walk home quite at your ease, praising warmly the eloquence and the logic of the sermon. I have heard others (infinitely greater in my poor judgment), after hearing whom you would have felt it profanation to criticise the literary merits of their sermon, high as those were: but you walked home thinking of the lesson and not of the teacher; solemnly revolving the truths you had heard; and asking the best of all help to enable you to remember them and act upon them.

There are various ways in which self-consciousness disagreeably evinces its existence; and there is not one perhaps more disagreeable than the affected avoidance of what is generally regarded as egotism.

Depend upon it, my reader, that the straightforward and natural writer who frankly uses the first person singular, and says, 'I think thus and thus,' I have seen so and so,' is thinking of himself and his own. personality a mighty deal less than the man who is always employing awkward and roundabout forms of expression to avoid the use of the obnoxious I. Every such periphrasis testifies unmistakeably that the man was thinking of himself; but the simple, natural writer, warm with his subject, eager to press his views upon his readers, uses the I without a thought of self, just because it is the shortest, most direct, and most natural way of expressing himself. The recollection of his own personality probably never once crossed his mind during the composition of the paragraph from which an illset critic might pick out a score of I's. To say 'It is submitted' instead of 'I think,' 'It has been observed' instead of I have seen,' the present writer' instead of 'I,' is much the more really egotistical. Try to write an essay without using that vowel which some men think the very shibboleth of egotism, and the remembrance of yourself will be in the background of your mind all the time you are writing. It will be always intruding and pushing in its face, and you will be able to give only half your mind to your subject. But frankly and naturally use the 'I,' and the remembrance of yourself vanishes. You are grappling with the subject; you are thinking of it

and of nothing else. You use the readiest and most unaffected mode of speech to set out your thoughts of it. You have written I a dozen times, but you have not thought of yourself once.

You may see the self-consciousness of some men strongly manifested in their handwriting. The handwriting of some men is essentially affected; more especially their signature. It seems to be a very searching test whether a man is a conceited person or an unaffected person, to be required to furnish his autograph to be printed underneath his published portrait. I have fancied I could form a theory of a man's whole character from reading, in such a situation, merely the words 'Very faithfully yours, Eusebius Snooks.' You could see that Mr. Snooks was acting when he wrote that signature. He was thinking of the impression it would produce on those who saw it. It was not the thing which a man would produce who simply wished to write his name legibly in as short a time and with as little needless trouble as possible. Let me say with sorrow that I have known even venerable bishops who were not superior to this irritating weakness. Some men aim at an aristocratic hand; some deal in vulgar flourishes. These are the men who have reached no further than that stage at which they are proud of the dexterity with which they handle their pen. Some strive after an affectedly simple and student-like hand; some at a dashing and military style. But