of being thought blue, because then these gentlemen would be afraid of them. They connect literature and wisdom with odd persons not in society;' senators and geniuses are little seen amongst them. It is their bore of an uncle who makes those long speeches about the malt lax. The best matches are the young men of Melton and Crockford's ; (as I have before said) they must please the best matches; they borrow the tone most pleasing to them; the mothers, for the sake of the daughters, the daughters for their own sakethus, to a slang of mind, they mould a fitting jargon of conversation. Our aristocracy does not even preserve elegance to ton, and, with all the affectations, fosters none of the graces, of a court. France owes the hereditary refinement and airiness of conversation, that distinguishes her higher orders, less, however, to the courtiers than to those whom the courtiers have always sought. Men of letters and men of genius have been at Paris invariably drawn towards the upper circles, and have consumed their own dignity of character in brightening the pleasures of the great; but, in London, men of intellectual distinctions are not frequently found in that society which is termed the best the few who do haunt that gloomy region, are but the scattered witlings of an ancient clique, who have survived even the faculty of premeditating good things; they do not belong to this day, but to the past, when Devonshire House and Melbourne House were for a short time and from fortuitous circumstances made the resort of genius, as well as rank; the fashion thus set was brief and evanescent, and expired with the brilliant persons who, seeking to enliven the great world, only interrupted its dulness. They have played off the fireworks, and all is once more dark.

The modern practice of Parliament to hold its discussions at night has a considerable influence in diminishing the intellectual character of general society. The House of Commons naturally drains off many of the ablest and best informed of the English gentlemen: the same. cause has its action upon men of letters, whom statesmen usually desire to collect around them; the absence of one conspires to effect the absence of the other: our saloons are left solely to the uncultivated and the idle, and you seek in vain for those nightly reunions of wits and senators which distinguished the reign of Ane, and still give so noble à charm to the assemblies of Paris.

The respect we pay to wealth absorbs the respect we should pay to genius. Literary men have not with us any fixed and settled position as men of letters. In the great game of honours, none fall to their share. We may say truly with a certain political economist, "We pay best, 1st, those who destroy us, generals; 2nd, those who cheat ús, politicians and quacks; 3rd, those who amuse us, singers and musicians; and, least of all, those who instruct us." It is an important truth noted by Helvetius, that the degree of public virtue in a

དྷྭ་

state depends exactly on the proper distribution of public rewards. "I am nothing here," said one of the most eminent men of science this country ever produced; "I am forced to go abroad sometimes to preserve my self-esteem."

Our English authors thus holding no fixed position in society, and from their very nature being covetous of reputation, often fall into one of three classes; the one class seek the fashion they cannot command, and are proud to know the great; another become irritable and suspicious, afraid that they are never sufficiently esteemed, and painfully vain out of a sense of bashfulness; the third, of a more lofty nature, stand aloof and disdainful, and never consummate their capacities, because they will not mix with a world to which they know themselves superior.

A literary man with us is often forced to be proud of something else than talent-proud of fortune, of connexion, or of birth-in order not to be looked down upon. Byron would never have set a coronet over his bed if he had not written poetry; nor the fastidious Walpole have affected to disdain the author, if he had not known that with certain circles, authorship was thought to lower the gentleman. Every one knows the anecdote of a certain professor of chemistry, who, eulogizing Boyle, thus concluded his panegyrics: "He was a great man, a very great man; he was father of chemistry, and-brother to the Earl of Cork!" You laugh at the simplicity of the professor; after all it was no bathos in practice;-depend upon it, the majority of the world thought quite as much of the brother of Lord Cork as they did of the father of chemistry. The Professor was only the unconscious echo of the vulgar voice of Esteem.

Observe Mr. Nettleton; he is a poet of celebrity is that all? marry come up! he is a much greater man than that comes to-he is on the best possible terms at Holland House. He values himself much on writing smooth verses; he values himself more on talking with a certain tone of good breeding. He is a wit-a very rare character; yes, but he does not take so much pride in being merely a wit, as on being a wit at the best houses! Mr. Nettleton is one of the vainest of men; but it would not please him much to hear you admired him, if he thought you a nobody. He is singularly jealous; but you might make Europe ring with your name, and he would not envy you, unless the grands seigneurs ran after you. 'Mr. has written a beautiful book; have you seen it, Nettleton ?" "No; who says it is beautiful?”

"Oh! all the world, I fancy."

"There you are mistaken. We talked over all the new works at Miss Berry's last night, and all the world said nothing about your Mr. What's-his-name, and his book."

'Well, you are a judge of these matters; all I know is, that the Duke of Devonshire is mad to be introduced to him."

Nettleton, turning quite pale," The Duke of Devonshire introduced to him?"

A smaller man than Mr. Nettleton in the literary world, is Mr. Nokes. Mr. Nokes is a prototype of the small gear; not exactly a poet, nor a novelist, nor an historian, but a little of all three; a literary man, in short-homme de lettres. In France he would enjoy a very agreeable station, mixt with other hommes de lettres, have no doubt of his own merit, and be perfectly persuaded of his own consequence. Very different from all this is Mr. Nokes; he has the most singular distrust of himself; he liveth in perpetual suspicion that you mean to affront him. If you are sallying out on the most urgent business, your friend dying, your motion in the House of Commons just ready to come on, your mistress waiting to see you for the last time before she returns your letters, and hopes you may be happy, though she would hate you if you were not miserable to your dying day—if, I say, on some such business you should be hurrying forth, woe to you if you meet Nokes! You pass him with a hasty nod, and a "how are you, dear sir?” Nokes never forgives you, you have hurt his feelings indelibly. He sayeth to himself, "Why was that man so eager to avoid me?" He ruminateth, he museth, he cheweth the cud upon your unmannerly accost. He would have had you stop and speak to him, and ask him after the birth of his new poem, and hope his tale in the Annual was doing as well as could be expected; he is sorely galled at your omission; he pondereth the reason; he looketh at his hat, he looketh at his garments, he is persuaded it is because his habiliments were not new, and you were ashamed to be seen with him in the street. He never hits on the right cause; he never thinketh you may have pressing business; Nokes dreameth of no business save that which to Nokes appertaineth. Nokes is the unhappiest of men; he for ever looks out for cantharides to rub into his sores. If you meet him in a literary party, you must devote the whole evening to him and his projects, or he considers you the most insolent and the most frivolous of mankind; he forgetteth that there are fifty other Nokes's in the room. He boweth to you always with a proud humility, as if to say, "I am a great man, though you don't think so." Nokes is, at once, the most modest and the most impudent of our species. He imagines you despise him; yet he is chafed because you do not adore. You are oppressed with incalculable business; a lawyer, perhaps, in full practice; the editor of a daily newspaper; the member of a Reformed Parliament engaged in thirteen committees; yet, on the strength of a bare introduction, he sendeth you in manuscript, the next day-three plays, two novels, and thirty poems, which he bashfully requesteth you first, to read; se

condly, to correct; and, thirdly, to interest yourself to get published. Two days after, you receive the following letter:

"SIR,

"When, on Wednesday last, I sent to your house my humble attempts, soliciting your attention in the most respectful language, I certainly did expect, in common courtesy, to have received, ere this, a reply. I am conscious that you have many engagements that you doubtless think of superior consequence to the task of reading my compositions; but there are others, sir, who have thought highly of what you apparently despise. But enough !—I beg you will immediately send back, by the bearer, ALL THE PAPERS which, trusting to your reported sympathy with men of letters, I had the folly to trouble you with. To me at least they are of importance.

"I am,

sir,

"Your obedient servant,

"JOHN SAMUEL NOKES."

Send back the papers, by all means: Nokes would be still more offended by any apology for delay, or any excuse for not ultimately prevailing on some bookseller to ruin himself by their publication. Nokes is a vindictive man, though he knoweth it not; nay, he esteemeth himself a very reservoir of the lacteal humanities. You may have served him essentially to-day; to-morrow you may have "wounded his feelings;" and, by next Saturday, be sure of a most virulent anonymous attack on you. But Nokes is to be more pitied than blamed; he is unfit for the world, only because he has no definite position in it.

Look now at a third species of literary men. Perhaps, dear, you recollect Mr. Lofty: what a fine creature he is, how full of deep learning, of pure sentiment, of generous romance: how you would like him, if you could but know him-but that may never be !-He builds a wall between himself and other men. In the streets he walketh alone; he sitteth alone in the large arm-chair at the Athenæum; he refuseth to converse: he is a ruminative, but not a gregarious animal. His books are admirable; but, somehow or other, they are not popular-he writeth for himself, not mankind: he is not at his ease in society, even with literary men; he will not let out,-his mind is far away. He is tenderly benevolent, but frigidly unsocial; he would rather give you his fortune than take a walk with you. Hence, with all his genius, not knowing how to address mankind, and disdainful of the knowledge, he does not a tithe of the benefit that he might. Could he learn to co-operate with others, he might reform a world; but he saith with Sir Thomas Browne," The world that I regard is myself.” Yet blame affects him sensibly-a hostile review wounds him to the quick he telleth not his complaint, but it preys within: he knows himself to be undervalued he is not jealous of lesser men's success,

but he chafes at it-it is a proof of injustice to him: he is melancholic and despondent: he pines for the Ideal: he feels society is not made for the nobler aims, and sickens at the littleness of daily life: he has in him all the elements of greatness, but not of triumph: he will die with his best qualities unknown.

These are three specimens of the Literary Man, essentially different in most things, but having something in common, and formed alike by peculiarities in our social system.

CHAPTER III.

The feeling of Melancholy and Weariness; how engendered.-We grow out of it with Age.-The Philosophy of Idleness, its Sadness.-A Reason why we are a Religious People.

FROM the tone of Society which I have attempted to describe, arise one of the most profound of our national feelings-that listless and vague melancholy which partakes both of the Philosophical and the Poetic; that sad and deep sentiment which is found only in the English and the German character, and is produced in each nation by the same causes; it is the result in both of an eager mind placed in a dull and insipid circle. (For in the small towns of Germany, society, if it possesses more wisdom than in England, does not proffer more charms.) A weariness of spirit creeps over us, and the flatness of the World produces somewhat the same moral result as the vanity of Knowledge. Hence, with the more intellectual of our gentry, the roving and desultory thirst of travel. Unsatisfied desire, which they do not analyze, urges them on to escape from the "stale and unprofitable usages" of their native world. And among the rich of no other people do you so constantly find examples of the discontented. This habit of mind, so unfortunate to the possessor, is not unfavourable to poetry: and though derived from the pettiest causes, often gives something of interest and nobleness to the character. But it is chiefly confined to the young; after a certain age we grow out of it; the soul becomes accustomed to the mill, and follows the track mechanically which it commenced in disgust..

But if there be one sentiment more mournful than another while it lasts, it is that conviction that All is Vanity which springs from the Philosophy of Idleness; that craving for a sympathy which we never