ABSTRACT
It is no wonder that the world is full of paradox, extravagance, and morbid feeling, considering how much the tone of society runs counter to the natural habits of the greater part of its members. This is a thinking age; but we must beware of argument:—a reading age; but the stigma of blue hangs in terrorem over our heads, to fright us from treating of those objects which are uppermost and familiar. For such as us, whose busy hours are spent among books and their mighty parents, society has become a dead letter: if at any time with spirits elevated by the successful studies of the day, we venture into the drawing-room of an acquaintance, mirth forsakes us at the door, and before we arrive up stairs, propriety has been so busy lecturing on bienséance and the ton—on the topics to be pursued or avoided, that the gay good-humoured tripper on the pavé, is metamorphosed into the long-visaged and circumspect member of the coterie. To talk politics is out of the question (yet the Queen is a tempting subject for gossip);—the name of aught that sounds like a book, except it be a brief judgment on the new play, is shunned, as though each word tattoo’d the hearers with indigo;—of the Arts no one knows any thing, not even the professors; and of Music all know too much; yet, for these very reasons, they are the best possible conversation topics. Thought, sense, or reason, would be thrown away on them, and the best way to hit the mark, is to shoot at random. Remarks are nothing, unless out o’ the way, and all the better for being unintelligible. Yet, to be au fait at nonsense, is no easy matter. To be a good trifler, requires an apprenticeship, as well as to be a good weaver; and books are not the way to become free of either craft. But let them have their share, and let us not hold them up as scarecrows, to put to flight good-fellowship and gaiety.
