memory now.

“They should wear it off by travel.” - Why, it is true, said I, that will go far; but then it will often happen, that in the velocity of a modern tour, and amidst the materials through which it is commonly made, the friction is so violent, that not only the rust, but the metal too, is lost in the progress.

“Give me leave to correct the expression of your metaphor,” said Mr. Silton: “that is not always rust which is acquired by the inactivity of the body on which it preys; such, perhaps, is the case with me, though indeed I was never cleared from my youth; but (taking it in its first stage) it is rather an encrustation, which nature has given for purposes of the greatest wisdom.”

“You are right,” I returned; “and sometimes, like certain precious fossils, there may be hid under it gems of the purest brilliancy.”

“Nay, farther,” continued Mr. Silton, “there are two distinct sorts of what we call bashfulness; this, the awkwardness of a booby, which a few steps into the world will convert into the pertness of a coxcomb; that, a consciousness, which the most delicate feelings produce, and the most extensive knowledge cannot always remove.”

From the incidents I have already related, I imagine it will be concluded that Harley was of the latter species of bashful animals; at least, if Mr. Silton’s principle is just, it may be argued on this side; for the gradation of the first mentioned sort, it is certain, he never attained.  Some part of his external appearance was modelled from the company of those gentlemen, whom the antiquity of a family, now possessed of bare £250 a year, entitled its representative to approach: these indeed were not many; great part of the property in his neighbourhood being in the hands of merchants, who had got rich by their lawful calling abroad, and the sons of stewards, who had got rich by their lawful calling at home: persons so perfectly versed in the ceremonial of thousands, tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands (whose degrees of precedency are plainly demonstrable from the first page of the Complete Accomptant, or Young Man’s Best Pocket Companion) that a bow at church from them to such a man as Harley would have made the parson look back into his sermon for some precept of Christian humility.



CHAPTER XII - OF WORLDLY INTERESTS



There are certain interests which the world supposes every man to have, and which therefore are properly enough termed worldly