CONSERVATIVE SOCIETY. 99 brilliant form, without heart and soul, and cold as death. I have often suffered myself to be too much carried away by the graceful qualities of such persons, and cultivated acquaintanceships of this kind more than was wise, and more than I could persevere in. It was my fate that such liking for me; and I, in men always showed a particular return, felt more attracted towards them than to any other acquaintance, because they could far excel every other sort of men in that animated flow of conversation, which is of all pleasures the greatest to me. For in all artificial relationships, where the barriers that divide you are not removed by personal attachment and community of interest, and the immediate concerns of each must remain unapproached, the degree of pleasure to be found in intercourse must depend upon the vivacity of mind and the individuality exhibited by each. Niebuhr. There is nothing artificial about these people; that is a great point: but genuine life, interest in the noblest subjects, is wanting also, and has given way to a narrow circle of blindly received and invincible prejudices; they have so adapted themselves to the world as it goes, that when its evils force themselves upon them, nothing is so far from their thoughts as that the origin of these may be among the things to which they are themselves accustomed. They rather imagine that they must arise from some change or innovation in the order of things, which is essentially bad. Niebuhr. 100 COURAGE IN SOCIETY. Some men so dislike the dust kicked up by the generation they belong to, that, being unable to pass, they lag behind it. Hare. Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing. D'Israeli. Leaves are light, and useless, and idle, and wavering, and changeable; they even dance; yet God in his wisdom has made them part of the oak. In so doing he has given us a lesson not to deny the stout-heartedness within, because we see the lightsomeness without. Hare. I will not think any human being the worse, but much the better, for having a broad foundation of seriousness, which the lightest spirits may gracefully illuminate. Playfulness on the top of seriousness, is not only a charm to others, but it is the wise secret of life. Oakfield. Few persons have courage enough to seem as good as they really are. Hare. I wonder what would become of us if we, with our softened natures, were suddenly exposed to the torrent of temptation that besets the poor. If all that God demands of me is that I shall resist the foolish dictates of a feeble, foolish society, I shall not think myself hardly tasked. Oakfield. COURAGE IN SOCIETY. 101 . An artist should be fit for the best society, and should keep out of it. Society always has a destructive influence upon an artist; first by its sympathy with his meanest powers; secondly, by its chilling want of understanding of his greatest; and, thirdly, by its vain occupation of his time and thoughts. Ruskin. CONVERSATION AND MANNERS. VARIOUS MINDS NEEDED. THERE is a strong disposition in men of opposite minds to despise each other. A grave man cannot conceive what is the use of a wit in society; a person who takes a strong common sense view of a subject, is for pushing out by the head and shoulders, an ingenious theorist, who catches at the lightest and faintest analogies; and another man, who scents the ridiculous from afar, will hold no commerce with him who tastes exquisitely the fine feelings of the heart, and is alive to nothing else: whereas talent is talent, and mind is mind, in all its branches! Wit gives to life one of its best flavors; common sense leads to immediate action, and gives society its daily motion; large and comprehensive views its annual rotation; ridicule chastises folly and impudence, and keeps men in their proper sphere; subtlety seizes hold of the fine threads of truth; analogy darts away to the most sublime discoveries; feeling paints all the exquisite passions of man's soul, and rewards him by a thousand SHALLOW CONVERSATION. 103 inward visitations for the sorrows that come from without. God made it all! It is all good! We must despise no sort of talent; they all improve, exalt, and gladden life. Sidney Smith. I have heard words struck out, when two minds of equal strength, but of unequal quality, came in contact, that were as rough and burning with gold, as any fragments of quartz smitten from the jagged ledge by Californian's hammer. Truths are set free which were never 66 thought out" by the speaker; felt by him, in their full profunditybut which he would be the last one to realize, should he attempt the task of their analyzation. The Crayon. Conversation is, in truth, an exercise very dangerous to the understanding when practised in any large measure as an art or an amusement. To be ready to speak before he has time to think, to say something apt and specious, something which he may very well be supposed to think, when he has nothing to say that he really does think,to say what is consistent with what he has said before, to touch topics lightly and let them go, these are the arts of a conversationist. Nothing is searched out by conversation of this kind, — nothing is heartily believed, whether by those who say it or by those who hear it. It may be easy, graceful, clever, and sparkling, and bits of knowledge may be plentifully tossed to and fro in it; but it will be vain and unprofitable; it may cultivate a certain micaceous, sandy surface of the mind, but all that lies below |
