are yonder. It is said that they only want the stimulus of a
necessity, something of daring to tempt, or something of difficulty to
provoke them, to be just as bold and energetic as ever their fathers
were. I don't deny it. I am only complaining of the system which makes
sheep of them, reduces life to a dreary table-land, making the stupid
fellows the standard, and coming down to their level for the sake of
uniformity. Formerly they who had more wit, more smartness, more worldly
knowledge than their neighbours, enjoyed a certain pre-eminence; the
flash of their agreeability lighted up the group they talked in, and
they were valued and sought after. Now the very homage rendered, even in
this small way, was at least a testimony that superiority was recognised
and its claims admitted. What is the case now? Apathy is excellence,
and the nearest approach to insensibility is the greatest eminence
attainable.

In the Regency, when George IV. was Prince, the clever talkers certainly
abounded; and men talk well or ill exactly as there is a demand for
the article. The wittiest conversationalist that ever existed would be
powerless in a circle of these modern "Unsurprised ones." Their vacant
self-possession would put down all the Grattans and Currans and Jeffreys
and Sydney Smiths in the world. I defy the most brilliant, the readiest,
the most genial of talkers to vivify the mass of inert dulness he will
find now at every dinner and in every drawing-room.

The code of modern manners is to make ease the first of all objects;
and, in order that the stupidest man may be at his ease, the ablest is
to be sacrificed. He who could bring vast stores of agreeability to
the common stock must not show his wares, because there are a store of
incapables who have nothing for the market.

They have a saying in Donegal, that "the water is so strong it requires
two whiskies;" but I would ask what amount of "spirits" would enliven
this dreariness; what infusion of pleasantry would make Brown and Jones
endurable when multiplied by what algebraists call an _x_--an unknown
quantity--of other Browns and Joneses?

We are constantly calling attention to the fact of the influence exerted
over morals and manners in France by the prevailing tone of the lighter
literature, and we mark the increasing licentiousness that has followed
such works as those of Eugene Sue and the younger Dumas. Let us not
forget to look at home, and see if, in the days when the