the misery of being always under a mask

Editor's note: the following entries were written between October 1836 and July 1837; no specific date is written in the journal.

Fortune to come like a peddler with his goods, as wreaths of laurel, diamonds, crowns: selling them, but asking for them the sacrifice of health, of integrity, perhaps of life in the battle-field, and of the real pleasures of existence. Who would buy, if the price were to be paid down?

The dying exclamation of the Emperor Augustus, "Has it not been well acted?" An essay on the misery of being always under a mask. A veil may be needful, but never a mask. Instances of people who wear masks in all classes of society, and never take them off even in the most familiar moments, though sometimes they may chance to slip aside.

The various guises under which Ruin makes his approaches to his victims: to the merchant, in the guise of a merchant offering speculations; to the young heir, a jolly companion; to the maiden, a sighing, sentimentalist lover.

What were the contents of the burden of Christian in the "Pilgrim's Progress?" He must have been taken for a peddler traveling with his pack.