REFLECTIONS.
ON HUMAN NATURE
The fawning wretch, I might almost say the coward, who whines at every stroke of fate, who advances with an abject air, begs a crust of bread, and resigns himself to the pleasure or displeasure of his benefactor, is easily recognized: the very page-boy is physiognomist enough to tell him at a glance. But his counterpart, the reserved man, the man who is fit to play only one or two parts in life, whose distress is more felt than spoken, who is conscientious though put to hack-work—such a one is more difficult to recognize. It requires a practised eye not to take his unaffected modesty for secret pride, and his short manner in everything for disdain.
The lowest classes, although they do not think it worth while to write down what they perceive, do nevertheless perceive and feel all that would have been worth the noting. The difference between the masses and the man of learning often consists in no more than a kind of apperception, or in the art of putting things into expression.
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