 she not constantly attempted to appear much younger. Her dress was fantastically fashionable, her manners affected all the various passions of youth, and her conversation was perpetually embellished with accusations upon her own "heedlessness, thoughtlessness, carelessness, and childishness."
There is perhaps, in every individual, one parent motive to every action, good or bad: be that as it will, it was evident, that with Lady Clementina, all she said or did, all she thought or looked, had but one foundation—vanity.—If she was nice, or if she was negligent, vanity was the cause of both; for she would contemplate

with the highest degree of self-complacency "what such a one would say of her elegant preciseness, or what such a one would think of her interesting neglect."
If she complained she was ill, it was with the certainty that her languor would be admired; if she boasted she was well, it was that the spectator might admire her glowing health; if she laughed, it was because she thought it made her look pretty; if she cried, it was because she thought it made her look prettier still. If she scolded her servants, it was from vanity, to show her superior knowledge to theirs; and she was kind to them from the same vice, that her benevolence might excite their admiration.—Forward, and impertinent in the company of her equals from the vanity of supposing herself above them, she was bashful even to shame-facedness in the presence of her superiors, because her vanity told her she engrossed all their observation. Through vanity she had no memory; for she constantly forgot every thing she heard others say, from the minute attention which she paid to every thing she said herself.

She had become an old maid from vanity, believing no offer she received worthy of her deserts; and when her power of farther conquest began to be doubted, she married from vanity to repair the character of her fading charms. In a word, her vanity was of that magnitude, that she had no idea but that she was humble in her own opinion; and it would have been impossible to have convinced her that she thought well of herself, because she thought so well, as to be assured, that her own thoughts undervalued her.


THAT, which in a weak woman is called vanity, in a man of sense, is termed pride—make one a degree stronger, or the other a degree weaker, and the dean and his wife were infected with the self-same folly. Yet, do not let the reader suppose that this failing (
