This was far from being commendable; but, although emulation and
vanity have some features in common, still they must not be
confounded: the former consists in generous efforts to equal or
surpass some one in something praiseworthy; the second is a kind of
self-love, that seeks to purchase respect or flattery at no matter
what cost;--the one is a vice, the other a virtue.
Fritz and Jack were not actuated by vanity; they were urged on by
their impulses, without weighing the circumstances that gave them
rise; and indeed they were not even conscious of being more desirous
of renown now than they had been hitherto.
The temperament of Ernest and Frank was of another kind. Their natures
were much less excitable, and it did not appear that the recent
arrivals had altered their outward demeanor in the slightest degree;
they continued calm, staid, and reflective, as they had ever been.
All four were a singular mixture of the child and the man--knowing
many things that young people are ignorant of, they were yet almost
totally unacquainted with the ordinary attributes of social
life--unsophisticated and naive to an extreme degree, they would have
appeared in a fashionable drawing-room downright fools. On the other
hand, they possessed great clearness of perception, presence of mind
in danger, promptitude in action, and the utmost coolness in the face
of apparently insurmountable obstacles--qualities that would have
utterly confounded the young men who shine in the saloons of Europe,
whose chief merit often consists in their being familiar with the
unmeaning conventionalisms of fashionable life.
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