It is quite true that the largest part of conversation turns upon
eating and drinking, the weather, the vices and follies of our
neighbours, and a thousand other trifles that lead not to dispute; and
it must be admitted that it is bad companionship to be eternally
canvassing the greater interests of life, and forcing upon society
opinions upon things in general. There are, indeed, themes in plenty
which belong to the neutral ground of debate; but it is very pitiable
that they should so ill bear repetition. All the world, if they dared
avow as much, are heartily tired of them. Like cursing and swearing,
they are merely unmeaning expletives to supply the lack of sense, to
gain time, and to give a man the satisfaction of sometimes hearing his
own voice. With all the assistance of cards, music, dancing, and
champagne, society is at best but a dreary business, and it requires no
little animal spirits to undergo the infliction with decency. Are you
admitted on terms of familiarity to the domestic hearth of your friend,
that privilege confers on you the opportunity of becoming intimately
acquainted with the faults of his servants, and (what is worse) with
the merits of his children.
A dinner of ceremony is a funeral without a legacy; an assembly is a
mob, and a ball a compound of glare, tinsel, noise, and dust. However
amusing in their freshness, after a few repetitions, they are only
rendered endurable by the prospect of some collateral gain, or the
gratification of personal vanity. To exhibit the beauty of a young wife,
or the diamonds of an old one; to be able to say the best thing that is
uttered; to sport a red ribbon or a Waterloo medal in their first
novelty; to carry a point with a great man, or to borrow money from a
rich one, may pass off an evening very well, with those who happen to be
interested in such speculations; but, these things apart, the arrantest
trifler in the circle must get weary at last, and be heartily rejoiced
when the conclusion of the season spares him all further reiteration of
the mill-horse operation. It is this insipidity of society that forces
so many of its members upon desperate adventures of gallantry, and upon
deep play. Any thing, every thing is good to escape from the languor and
listlessness of a converse from which whatever interests is banished.
Many a woman loses her character, and many a man incurs a verdict of
ruinous damages, in the simple search of that rarest of all rare things
in society--a sensation. Neither is the matter much mended, if, barring
the insipidity of bon-ton company, you plunge into the formal gravity of
the middle classes, or into the noisy, empty mirth of the lower. The man
of sense and feeling, wherever he goes, will find himself in a minority,
in which few will speak his language or comprehend his ideas. He will
seldom return to his home without a weary sense of the "stale, flat, and
unprofitable" nothings he has been compelled to entertain in his
intercourse with the world,--without the recollection of some outrage on
his independence, some dogmatism that he dared not question, some
impertinence that he dared not confute. With his ears ringing with
blue-stocking literature, threadbare sophistries, forms erected into
important principles, mediocrity elevated into consideration, and the
pre-eminence of the vain, the ignorant, and the contemptible, he will
shut himself up in his solitude, and say with the Englishman at Paris
_Je m'ennuis tres bien ici_. Against the recurrence of these annoyances,
day after day renewed, what nerves can hold out? As life advances, time
becomes precious, every moment is counted, every enjoyment is computed;
and while the effort necessary for pleasing and being pleased becomes
greater, the motive for making that exertion grows less. When the
sources of physical gratification are dried up, and the illusions of
life are dissipated, there remains nothing for enjoyment but a tranquil
fireside, and the mastery of our own ideas and of our own habits in the
privacy of home. But then, to enjoy these, you must not have a methodist
wife, and you must have a porter who can lie with a good grace, a fellow
who could say "not at home," though death himself knocked at the door.
Neither should you read the newspapers, nor walk the streets. The times
are long gone by since "wisdom cried out there." Folly, impertinence,
sheer impertinence, has exclusive possession of the king's highway; and
a dog with a tin-kettle at tail has as good a chance as the wretch who
dares to tread the pavement without partaking of the ruling insanity.
Oh! Mr. Brougham, Mr. Brougham! your schoolmaster has a great deal yet
to do: pray heaven his rods and his fools' caps may hold out!--_New
Month. Mag._
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