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Bashfulness.

their own personality, cannot put self aside, and act as though neither others nor they themselves were thinking of their individual existence.

Bashful persons never behave naturally, because they are never unconscious of their own deportment. They never shine in conversation, because they are haunted by the fear that they cannot do justice in language to the ideas which are struggling for utterance. They never appear to advantage, because they are tortured by the instinctive knowledge that in spite of being very sensible, sober-minded individuals, they are always hovering upon the borders of the ridiculous. If you laugh with them, they imagine that you laugh at them. If you sympathize with them, you cause them mortification. If you forbear to notice them, you wound them by your supposed indifference. They have a morbid horror of publicity, and yet they constantly become conspicuous, simply by never forgetting themselves.

Goldsmith, in his portrait of Charles Marlow, illustrates a species of bashfulness, which only exists in the presence of equals and superiors, and degenerates into positive insolence and unbridled freedom when thrown in contact with inferiors. Here self-consciousness is the moving principle again. Charles Marlow was frightened into the most absurd exhibitions of bashfulness by the dread of making an unfavorable impression upon those whose opinion he valued; but, being totally