But it is endless to try to reckon up the fashions in which people show that they have not learnt the lesson of their own unimportance.  Did you ever stop in the street and talk for a few minutes to some old bachelor?  If so, I dare say you have remarked a curious phenomenon.  You have found that all of a sudden the mind of the old gentleman, usually reasonable enough, appeared stricken into a state approaching idiocy, and that the sentence which he had begun in a rational and intelligible way was ending in a maze of wandering words, signifying nothing in particular.  You had been looking in another direction, but in sudden alarm you look straight at the old gentleman to see what on earth is the matter; and you discern that his eyes are fixed on some passer-by, possibly a young lady, perhaps no more than a magistrate or the like, who is by this time a good many yards off, with the eyes still following, and slowly revolving on their axes so as to follow without the head being turned round.  It is this spectacle which has drawn off your friend’s attention; and you notice his whole figure twisted into an ungainly form, intended to be dignified or easy, and assumed because he fancied that the passerby was looking at him.  Oh the pettiness of human nature!  Then you will find people afraid that they have given offence by saying or doing things which the party they suppose offended had really never observed that they had said or done.  There are people who fancy that in church everybody is looking at them, when in truth no mortal is taking the trouble to do so.  It is an amusing, though irritating sight, to behold a weak-minded lady walking into church and taking her seat under this delusion.  You remember the affected air, the downcast eyes, the demeanor intended to imply a modest shrinking from notice, but through which there shines the real desire, “Oh, for any sake, look at me!” There are people whose voice is utterly inaudible in church six feet off, who will tell you that a whole congregation of a thousand or fifteen hundred people was listening to their singing.  Such folk will tell you that they went to a church where the singing was left too much to the choir, and began to sing as usual, on which the entire congregation looked round to see who it was that was singing, and ultimately proceeded to sing lustily too.  I do not remember a more disgusting exhibition of vulgar self-conceit than I saw a few months ago at Westminster Abbey.  It was a weekday afternoon service, and the congregation was small.  Immediately before me there sat an insolent boor, who evidently did not belong to the Church of England.  He had walked in when the prayers were half over, having with difficulty been made to take off his hat, and his manifest wish was to testify his contempt for the whole place and service.  Accordingly he persisted in sitting, in a lounging attitude, when the people stood, and in standing up and staring about with an air of curiosity while they