temptation of more credit with less labor. A sufficient knowledge of botany or chemistry to make a figure, is easily obtained, while a thorough acquaintance with the historians, poets, and orators of antiquity requires much time, and close application."

"But," exclaimed Sir John, "can the fashionable studies pretend to give the same expansion to the mind, the same elevation to the sentiments, the same energy to the feelings, the same stretch and compass to the understanding, the same correctness to the taste, the same grace and spirit to the whole moral and intellectual man."

"For my own part," replied I, "so far from saying with Hamlet, 'Man delights not me, nor woman neither,' I confess I have little delight in any thing else. As a man, man is the creature with whom I have to do, and the varieties in his character interest me more than all the possible varieties of mosses, shells and fossils. To view this compound creature in the complexity of his actions, as portrayed by the hand of those immortal masters, Tacitus and Plutarch; to view him in the struggle of his passions, as displayed by Euripides and Shakspeare; to contemplate him in the blaze of his eloquence, by the two rival orators of Greece and Rome, is more congenial to my feelings than the ablest disquisition of which matter was ever the subject." Sir John, who is a passionate, and rather too exclusive, admirer of classic lore, warmly declared himself of my opinion.

"I went to town," replied I, "with a mind eager for intellectual pleasure. My memory was not quite unfurnished with passages which I thought likely to be adverted to, and which might serve to embellish conversation, without incurring the charge of pedantry. But though most of the men I conversed with were my equals in education, and my superiors in talent, there seemed little disposition to promote such topics as might bring our understandings into play. Whether it is that business, active life, and public debate, absorb the mind, and make men consider society rather as a scene to rest than to exercise it, I know not; certain it is that they brought less into the treasury of conversation than I expected; not because they were poor, but proud, or idle, and reserved their talents and acquisitions for higher occasions. The most opulent possessors, I often found the most penurious contributors."

"Rien de trop," said Mr. Stanley, "was the favorite maxim of an author[3] whom I am not apt to quote