Page:Romance & Reality 2.pdf/172

170 what they feel. We are the Chinese of conversation; and, day by day, the circle grows less and less. A flippant, vapid discourse, personal in all its bearings, in which "who peppers the highest is surest to please," and from which all intellectual subjects are carefully excluded—who shall deny, that if dialogues of the living were now to be written, such would be the chief matériel? Books, works of art, the noble statue, the glorious picture, how rarely are any of these the subjects of conversation? Few venture to speak on any topic that really interests them, for fear they should be led away by the warmth of speaking, and, by saying more than they intended, lay themselves open to the sarcasm which lies, like an Indian in ambush, ready to spring forth the moment the victim is off his guard. Take one instance among many. Beyond the general coarse and false compliment which it is held necessary to address with a popular author, and which is repaid by an affected and absurd indifference, what vein of conversation is afterwards started? Assuredly something which interests neither: the mind of the one receives no impression—that of the other puts forth no powers. The natural