l blood. They stand corrected by a whisper; a word or a
glance reminds them of the great eternal law. But it is not so with all.
Others in conversation seek rather contact with their fellow-men than
increase of knowledge or clarity of thought. The drama, not the
philosophy, of life is the sphere of their intellectual activity. Even
when they pursue truth, they desire as much as possible of what we may
call human scenery along the road they follow. They dwell in the heart
of life; the blood sounding in their ears, their eyes laying hold of
what delights them with a brutal avidity that makes them blind to all
besides, their interest riveted on people, living, loving, talking,
tangible people. To a man of this description, the sphere of argument
seems very pale and ghostly. By a strong expression, a perturbed
countenance, floods of tears, an insult which his conscience obliges him
to swallow, he is brought round to knowledge which no syllogism would
have conveyed to him. His own experience is so vivid, he is so
superlatively conscious of himself, that if, day after day, he is
allowed to hector and hear nothing but approving echoes, he will lose
his hold on the soberness of things and take himself in earnest for a
god. Talk might be to such an one the very way of moral ruin; the school
where he might learn to be at once intolerable and ridiculous.

This character is perhaps commoner than philosophers suppose. And for
persons of that stamp to learn much by conversation, they must speak
with their superiors, not in intellect, for that is a superiority that
must be proved, but in station. If they cannot find a friend to bully
them for their good, they must find either an old man, a woman, or some
one so far below them in the artificial order of society, that courtesy
may be particularly exercised.

The best teachers are the aged. To the old our mouths are always partly
closed; we must swallow our obvious retorts and listen. They sit above
our heads, on life's raised dais, and appeal at once to our respect and
pity. A flavour of the old school, a touch of something different in
their manner--which is freer and rounder, if they come of what is called
a good family, and often more timid and precise if they are of the
middle class--serves, in these days, to accentuate the difference of age
and add a distinction to grey hairs. But their superiority is founded
more deeply than by outward marks or gestures. They are before us in the