He was scarce ten years old when his mother died; but was not sensible of the misfortune he sustained by the loss of her, though, as it afterwards proved, was the greatest could have happened to him: the remembrance of the tenderness with which she had used him, joined to the sight of all the family in tears, made him at first indeed utter some bitter lamentations; but the thoughts of a new suit of mourning, a dress he had never yet been in, soon dissipated his grief, and the sight of himself before the great glass, in a habit so altogether strange, and therefore pleasing to him, took off all anguish for the sad occasion.--So early do we begin to be sensible of a satisfaction in any thing that we imagine is an advantage to our persons, or will make us be taken notice of.--How it grows up with us, and how difficult it is to be eradicated, I appeal even to those of the most sour and cynical disposition. Mr. Dryden admirably describes this propensity in human nature in these lines: Men are but children of a larger growth, Our appetites as prone to change as theirs, And full as craving too, and full as vain. A fondness for trifles is certainly no less conspicuous in age than youth; and we daily see it among persons of the best understanding, who wholly neglect every essential to real happiness in the pursuit of those very toys which children cry to be indulged in; even such as a bit of ribband, or the sound of a monosyllable tacked to the name; without considering that those badges of distinction, like bells about an ideot's neck, frequently serve only to render their folly more remarkable, and expose them to the contempt of the lookers on, who perhaps too, as nature is the same in all, want but the same opportunity to catch no less eagerly at the tawdry gewgaw. Natura felt not the loss of his dear mother, till he beheld another in her place. His father entered into a second marriage before much more than half his year of widowhood was expired, with a lady, who, though pretty near his equal in years, had yet remains enough of beauty to render her extremely vain and affected, and fortune enough to make her no less proud.--These two qualities occasioned Natura many rebuffs, to which he had not been acoustomed, and he felt them the more severely, as the name of mother had made him expect the same proofs of tenderness from this, who had the title, as he had remembered to have received from her who had been really so.