Human Understanding, or anyone else?'

'Because,' rejoined Anne, 'I think that if the rest of the world were
of your deliberate opinion, there would soon be a lock on the human
understanding.'

'I am sure I think there is at present,' returned Elizabeth; 'did you
see Aunt Anne last night wasted upon Mrs. Dale, obliged to listen to
the dullest stuff that ever was invented, and poor Mamma frightened out
of her wits? I should not wonder if she had dreamt of mad dogs all
night.'

'I do not defend Mrs. Dale's powers of intellect,' said Anne, 'but I
should have thought that you at least had little reason to complain.
You were very well off next to Mrs. Bouverie.'

'Oh! Mrs. Bouverie is a rara avis, an exception to the general rule,'
said Elizabeth; 'but you know, she or my uncle, or aunt, or Papa, are
generally forced to put a lock on their understanding. Why, Anne, what
are you laughing at?'

'Lizzie, I beg your pardon,' said Anne, trying to check herself, 'but I
could not help it. Your speech put me in mind of the prints from
Albano's four elements. Do not you remember Juno's visit to AEolus,
where he is opening the door of a little corner cupboard where he keeps
the puff-cheeked winds locked up? Do you mean to say that Mamma keeps
her mighty powers of mind locked up in the same way, for fear they
should burst out and overwhelm everybody?'

Elizabeth heartily joined in her cousin's merriment. 'I will tell you
what I do mean, Anne, what the great law of society is. Now, do not
put on that absurd face of mock gravity, or I shall only laugh, instead
of arguing properly.'

'Well, let us hear,' said Anne.

'It is almost more important than the law that you must eat with a
knife and fork,' said Elizabeth. 'There is one level of conversation,
fit for the meanest capacity; and whoever ventures to transgress it, is
instantly called blue, or a horrid bore, &c., &c.'

'Nonsense, Lizzie,' said Anne, laughing; 'I am sure I have heard plenty
of clever people talk, about sensible things too, and never did I hear
them called bores, or blue, or any of your awful et ceteras either.'

'Because people did not dare to do so,' said Elizabeth, 'but they
thought it all the same.'

'What do you mean by people?' said Anne.

'The dull, respectable, common-place gentry, who make up the mass of
mankind,' said Elizabeth.

'Do they?' said Anne.

'Do not they?' said Elizabeth.

'I do not know what the mass of mankind may be at