e is the brightest
ornament, gives a felicitous explanation of the reason. He says,
professional men, who are worth anything at all, are always ambitious,
and endeavour to make their acquaintance subservient to their own
advancement; while merchants are liable to such casualties, that their
friends are constantly exposed to the risk of being obliged to sink them
below their wonted equality, by granting them favours in times of
difficulty, or, what is worse, by refusing to grant them.

I am much indebted to you for the introduction to your friend G---. He
is one of us; or rather, he moves in an eccentric sphere of his own,
which crosses, I believe, almost all the orbits of all the classed and
classifiable systems of London. I found him exactly what you described;
and we were on the frankest footing of old friends in the course of the
first quarter of an hour. He did me the honour to fancy that I belonged,
as a matter of course, to some one of the literary fraternities of
Edinburgh, and that I would be curious to see the associations of the
learned here. What he said respecting them was highly characteristic of
the man. "They are," said he, "the dullest things possible. On my
return from abroad, I visited them all, expecting to find something of
that easy disengaged mind which constitutes the charm of those of France
and Italy. But in London, among those who have a character to keep up,
there is such a vigilant circumspection, that I should as soon expect to
find nature in the ballets of the Opera-house, as genius at the
established haunts of authors, artists, and men of science. Bankes
gives, I suppose officially, a public breakfast weekly, and opens his
house for conversations on the Sundays. I found at his breakfasts, tea
and coffee, with hot rolls, and men of celebrity afraid to speak. At the
conversations, there was something even worse. A few plausible talking
fellows created a buzz in the room, and the merits of some paltry
nick-nack of mechanism or science was discussed. The party consisted
undoubtedly of the most eminent men of their respective lines in the
world; but they were each and all so apprehensive of having their ideas
purloined, that they took the most guarded care never to speak of
anything that they deemed of the slightest consequence, or to hazard an
opinion that might be called in question. The man who either wishes to
augment his knowledge, or to pass his time agreeably, will never exp