rcumstance in his history or character, I shall be prepared
to call him 'charming.'"

The announcement of dinner fortunately broke up a discussion that
already promised unfavorably; nor were any of the party sorry at the
interruption.

CHAPTER VII. A LESSON IN PISTOL-SHOOTING

THERE are two great currents which divide public opinion in the whole
world, and all mankind may be classed into one or other of these
wide categories, "the people who praise, and the people who abuse
everything." In certain sets, all is as it ought to be, in this life.
Everybody is good, dear, and amiable. All the men are gifted and
agreeable; all the women fascinating and pretty. An indiscriminate
shower of laudations falls upon everything or everybody, and the only
surprise the bearer feels is how a world, so chuck full of excellence,
can possibly consist with what one reads occasionally in the "Times" and
the "Chronicle."

The second category is the Roland to this Oliver, and embraces those who
have a good word for nobody, and in whose estimation the globe is one
great penal settlement, the overseers being neither more nor less than
the best-conducted among the convicts. The chief business of these
people in life is to chronicle family disgraces and misfortunes, to
store their memories with defalcations, frauds, suicides, disreputable
transactions at play, unfair duels, seductions, and the like, and to be
always prepared, on the first mention of a name, to connect its owner,
or his grandmother, with some memorable blot, or some unfortunate event
of years before. If the everlasting laudations of the one set make
life too sweet to be wholesome, the eternal disparagement of the other
renders it too bitter to be enjoyable; nor would it be easy to say
whether society suffers more from the exercise of this mock charity on
the one side, or the practice of universal malevolence on the other.

Perhaps our readers will feel grateful when we assure them that we are
not intent upon pushing the investigation further. The consideration
was forced upon us by thinking of Colonel Haggerstone, who was a
distinguished member of class No. 2. His mind was a police sheet, or
rather like a page of that celebrated "Livre Noir," wherein all the
unexpiated offences of a nation are registered. He knew the family
disasters of all Europe, and not a name could be mentioned in society
to which he could not tag either a seduction, a fraud, a swindle, or a
poltroo