ses of existence were shaken
by little earthquakes, and he did not know where to stand or what to
say. He felt it was nonsense, but as everyone laughed and applauded he
supposed they were all too clever for him--too clever by half, and he
went away sadder, but no wiser. "If Christ were again on earth," said
Carlyle, of an earlier generation, "Mr. Milnes (Lord Houghton) would ask
him to breakfast, and the clubs would all be talking of the good things
he had said." Frivolity only changes its form, but the epigrams of the
early 'nineties were not Christlike, and Mr. Milnes would have been as
much astray among them as the good, plain man.

The epigrammatist still lingers, and sometimes dines; but his roses have
faded, and the weariness of his audience is no longer a pose. A tragic
ghost, he feels like one who treads alone some banquet-hall, not,
indeed, deserted, but filled with another company, and that is so much
drearier. The faces that used to smile on him are gone, the present
faces only stare and if he told them now that it may be better to have
loved and lost than never to have loved at all, but both are good, they
would conceal a shiver of boredom under politeness. It is recognised
that life with an epigrammatist has become unendurable. "Witty?" (if one
may quote again the Carlyle whom English people are forgetting) "O be
not witty: none of us is bound to be witty under penalties. A
fashionable wit? If you ask me which, he or a death's head, will be the
cheerier company for me, pray send _not_ him."

Evidently there are some creatures too bright if not too good for human
nature's daily food. They are like the pudding that was all raisins,
because the cook had forgotten to put in the suet. Sensible people put
in the suet pretty thick, and they find it fortifying. Here in England,
for instance, it has been the standing sneer of upstart pertness that
ordinary men and women always set out upon their conversations with the
weather. Well, and why on earth should they not? In every part of the
world the weather is the most important subject. India may suffer from
unrest, but the Indian's first thought is whether she suffers from
drought. Russia may seethe with revolution, but ninety-nine per cent. of
Russians are thinking of the crops. France may be disturbed about
Germany, but Frenchmen know the sun promises such a vintage as never
was. War may threaten Russia, but the outbreak depends upon the harvest.
Certainly, in our