The company were not soon weary of admiring the rustic building, which seemed raised as if by the stroke of a magician's wand, so rapidly had it sprung up. They were delighted to find that their pleasure was to be prolonged by drinking tea in the temple.

While we were at tea Mr. Stanley, addressing himself to me, said, "I have always forgotten to ask you, Charles, if your high expectations of pleasure from the society in London had quite answered?"

"I was entertained, and I was disappointed," replied I. "I always found the pleasure of the moment not heightened, but effaced by the succeeding moment. The ever restless, rolling tide of new intelligence at once gratified and excited the passion for novelty, which I found to be le grand poisson qui mange les petits. This successive abundance of fresh supply gives an ephemeral importance to every thing, and a lasting importance to nothing. We skimmed every topic, but dived into none. Much desultory talk, but little discussion. The combatants skirmished like men whose arms are kept bright by constant use; who were accustomed to a flying fight, but who avoided the fatigue of coming to close quarters. What was old, however momentous, was rejected as dull, what was new, however insignificant, was thought interesting. Events of the past week were placed with those beyond the flood; and the very existence of occurrences which continued to be matter of deep interest with us in the country, seemed there totally forgotten.

"I found, too, that the inhabitants of the metropolis had a standard of merit of their own. That knowledge of the town was concluded to be knowledge of the world; that local habits, reigning phrases, temporary fashions, and an acquaintance with the surface of manners, was supposed to be knowledge of mankind. Of course, he who was ignorant of the topics of the hour, and the anecdotes of a few modish leaders, was ignorant of human nature."

Sir John observed, that I was rather too young to be a praiser of past times, yet he allowed that the standard of conversation was not so high as it had been in the time of my father, by whose reports my youthful ardor had been inflamed. He did not indeed suppose that men were less intellectual now, but they certainly were less colloquially intellectual. "For this," added he, "various reasons may be assigned. In London man is every day becoming less of a social, and more of a gregarious animal. Crowds are as little favorable to conversation as to reflection. He finds, therefore, that he may figure in the mass with less expense of mind; and as to women, they are put to no expense at all. They find that by mixing with myriads, they may carry on the daily intercourse of life, without being obliged to bring a single idea to enrich the common stock."

"I do not wonder," said I, "that the dull and the uninformed love to shelter their insignificance in a crowd. In mingling with the multitude, their deficiencies elude detection. The vapid and the ignorant are like a bad play; they owe the little figure they make to the dress, the scenery, the music, and the company. The noise and the glare take off all attention from the defects of the work. The spectator is amused, and he does not inquire whether it is with the piece or with the accompaniments. The end is attained, and he is little solicitous about the means. But an intellectual woman, like a well written drama, will please at home without all these aids and adjuncts; nay, the beauties of the superior piece, and of the superior woman, will rise on a more intimate survey. But you were going, Sir John, to assign other causes for the decline and fall of conversation."

"One very affecting reason," replied he; "is that the alarming state of public affairs fills all men's minds with one momentous object. As every Englishman is a patriot, every patriot is a politician. It is natural that that subject should fill every mouth which occupies every heart, and that little room should be left for extraneous matter."

"I should accept this," said I, "as a satisfactory vindication, had I heard that the same absorbing cause had thinned the public places, or diminished the attraction of the private resorts of dissipation."

"There is a third reason," said Sir John. "Polite literature has in a good degree given way to experimental philosophy. The admirers of science assert, that the last was the age of words, and that this is the age of things. A more substantial kind of knowledge has partly superseded these elegant studies, which have caught such hold on your affections."

"I heartily wish," replied I, "that the new pursuits may be found to make men wiser; they certainly have not made them more agreeable."

"It is affirmed," said Mr. Stanley, "that the prevailing philosophical studies have a religious use, and that they naturally tend to elevate the heart to the great Author of the universe."

"I have but one objection to that assertion," replied Sir John, "namely, that it is not true. This would seem indeed to be their direct tendency, yet experiment, which you know is the soul of philosophy, has proved the contrary."

He then adduced some instances in our own country, which I forbear to name, that clearly evinced that this was not their necessary consequence; adding, however, a few great names on the more honorable side. He next adverted to the Baillies, the Condorcets, the D'Alemberts, and the Lalandes, as melancholy proofs of the inefficacy of mere science to make Christians.

"Far be it from me," said Sir John, "to undervalue philosophical pursuits. The modern discoveries are extremely important, especially in their application to the purposes of common life; but where these are pursued exclusively, I can not help preferring the study of the great classic authors, those exquisite masters of life and manners, with whose spirit conversation, twenty or thirty years ago, was so richly impregnated."

"I confess," said I, "there may be more matter; but there is certainly less mind in the reigning pursuits. The reputation of skill, it is true, may be obtained at a much less expense of time and intellect. The comparative cheapness of the acquisition holds out the powerful 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 for rules of moral conduct. Yet its adoption would be a salutary check against excess in all our pursuits. If polite learning is undervalued by the mere man of science, it is perhaps over-rated by the mere man of letters. If it dignifies retirement, and exalts society, it is not the great business of life; it is not the prime fountain of moral excellence."

"Well, so much for man," said Sir John, "but, Charles, you have not told us what you had to say of woman, in your observations on society."

"As to woman," replied I, "I declare that I found more propensity to promote subjects of taste and elegant speculation among some of the superior class of females, than in many of my own sex. The more prudent, however, are restrained through fear of the illiberal sarcasms of men who, not contented to suppress their own faculties, ridicule all intellectual exertion in woman, though evidently arising from a modest desire of improvement, and not the vanity of hopeless rivalry."

"Charles is always the Paladin of the reading ladies," said Sir John. "I do not deny it," replied I, "if they bear their faculties meekly. But I confess that what is sneeringly called a learned lady, is to me far preferable to a scientific one, such as I encountered one evening, who talked of the fulcrum, and the lever, and the statera, which she took care to tell us was the Roman steel-yard, with all the sang-froid of philosophical conceit."

"Scientific men," said Sir John, "are in general admirable for their simplicity, but in a technical woman, I have seldom found a grain of taste or elegance."

"I own," replied I, "I should greatly prefer a fair companion who could modestly discriminate between the beauties of Virgil and Milton, to one who was always dabbling in chemistry, and who came to dinner with dirty hands from the laboratory. And yet I admire chemistry too; I am now only speaking of that knowledge which is desirable in a female companion; for knowledge I must have. But arts, which are of immense value in manufactures, won't make my wife's conversation entertaining to me. Discoveries which may greatly improve dyeing and bleaching, will add little to the delights of one's summer evening's walk, or winter fire-side."

The ladies, Lucilla especially, smiled at my warmth. I felt that there was approbation in her smile, and though I thought I had said too much already, it encouraged me to go on. "I repeat, that next to religion, whatever relates to human manners, is most attracting to human creatures. To turn from conversation to composition. What is it that excites so feeble an interest, in perusing that finely written poem of the Abbe de Lille, 'Les Jardins?' It is because his garden has no cultivators, no inhabitants, no men and women. What confers that powerful charm on the descriptive parts of Paradise Lost? A fascination, I will venture to affirm, paramount to all the lovely and magnificent scenery which adorns it. Eden itself with all its exquisite landscape, would excite a very inferior pleasure did it exhibit only inanimate beauties. 'Tis the proprietors, 'tis the inhabitants, 'tis the live stock, of Eden, which seize upon the affections, and twine about the heart. The gardens, even of Paradise, would be dull without the gardeners. 'Tis mental excellence, 'tis moral beauty which completes the charm. Where this is wanting, landscape poetry, though it be read with pleasure, yet the interest it raises is cold. It is admired, but seldom quoted. It leaves no definite idea on the mind. If general, it is indistinct; if minute, tedious."

"It must be confessed," said Sir John, "that some poets are apt to forget that the finest representation of nature is only the scene, not the object; the canvas, not the portrait. We had indeed some time ago, so much of this gorgeous scene-painting, so much splendid poetical botany, so many amorous flowers, and so many vegetable courtships; so many wedded plants; roots transformed to nymphs, and dwelling in emerald palaces; that some how or other, truth and probability and nature, and man slipped out of the picture, though it must be allowed that genius held the pencil."

"In Mason's 'English Garden,'" replied I, "Alcander's precepts would have been cold, had there been no personification. The introduction of character dramatizes what else would have been frigidly didactic. Thomson enriches his landscape with here and there a figure, drawn with more correctness than warmth, with more nature than spirit, and exalts it everywhere by moral allusion and religious reference. The scenery of Cowper is perpetually animated with sketches of character, enlivened with portraits from real life, and the exhibition of human manners and passions. His most exquisite descriptions owe their vividness to moral illustration. Loyalty, liberty, patriotism, charity, piety, benevolence, every generous feeling, every glowing sentiment, every ennobling passion, grows out of his descriptive powers. His matter always bursts into mind. His shrubbery, his forest, his flower-garden, all produce

and lead to immortality."

Mr. Stanley said, adverting again to the subject of conversation, it was an amusement to him to observe what impression the first introduction to general society made on a mind conversant with books, but to whom a the world was in a manner new.

"I believe," said Sir John, "that an overflowing commerce, and the excessive opulence it has introduced, though favorable to all the splendors of art and mechanic ingenuity, yet have lowered the standard of taste, and debilitated the mental energies. They are advantageous to luxury, but fatal to intellect. It has added to the brilliancy of the drawing-room itself, but deducted from that of the inhabitant. It has given perfection to our mirrors, our candelabras, our gilding, our inlaying, and our sculpture, but it has communicated a torpor to the imagination, and enervated our intellectual vigor."

"In one way," said Mr. Stanley, smiling, "luxury has been favorable to literature. From the unparalleled splendor of our printing, paper, engraving, illuminating and binding, luxury has caused more books to be purchased, while from the growth of time-absorbing dissipation, it causes fewer to be read. I believe we were much more familiar with our native poets in their former plain garb than since they have been attired in the gorgeous dress which now decorates our shelves."

"Poetry," replied Mr. Stanley, "has of late too much degenerated into personal satire, persiflage, and caricature among one class of writers, while among another it has exhibited the vagrancies of genius without the inspiration, the exuberance of fancy without the curb of judgment, and the eccentricities of invention without the restrictions of taste. The image has been strained, while the verse has been slackened. We have had pleonasm without fullness, and facility without force. Redundancy has been mistaken for plenitude, flimsiness for ease, and distortion for energy. An over desire of being natural has made the poet feeble, and the rage for being simple has sometimes made him silly. The sensibility is sickly, and the elevation vertiginous."

"To Cowper," said Sir John, "master of melody as he is, the mischief is partly attributable. Such an original must naturally have a herd of imitators. If they can not attain to his excellences, his faults are always attainable. The resemblance between the master and the scholar is found chiefly in his defects. The determined imitator of an easy writer becomes insipid; of a sublime one, absurd. Cowper's ease appeared his most imitable charm, but ease aggraved is insipidity. His occasional negligences, his disciples adopted uniformly. In Cowper, there might sometimes be carelessness in the verse, but the verse itself was sustained by the vigor of the sentiment. The imitator forgot that his strength lay in the thought; that his buoyant spirit always supported itself; that the figure, though amplified, was never distorted; the image, though bold, was never incongruous; and the illustration, though new, was never false.

"The evil, however," continued Sir John, "seems to be correcting itself. The real genius, which exists in several of this whimsical school, I trust, will at length lead them to prune their excrescences, and reform their youthful eccentricities. Their good sense will teach that the surest road to fame is to condescend to tread in the luminous track of their great precursors in the art. They will see that deviation is not always improvement; that whoever wants to be better than nature will infallibly be worse; that truth in taste is as obvious as in morals, and as certain as in mathematics. In other quarters, both the classic and the Gothic muse are emulously soaring, and I hail the restoration of genuine poetry and pure taste."

"I must not," said I, "loquacious as I have already been, dismiss the subject of conversation without remarking that I found there was one topic which seemed as uniformly avoided by common consent as if it had been banished by the interdict of absolute authority, and that some forfeiture, or at least dishonor and disgrace, were to follow it on conviction—I mean religion."

"Surely, Charles," said Sir John, "you would not convert general conversation into a divinity school, and friendly societies into debating clubs."

"Far from it," replied I, "nor do I desire that ladies and gentlemen over their tea and coffee should rehearse their articles of faith, or fill the intervals of carving and eating with introducing dogmas, or discussing controversies. I do not wish to erect the social table, which was meant for innocent relaxation, into an arena for theological combatants. I only wish, as people live so much together, that if, when out of the multitude of topics which arise in conversation, an unlucky wight happens to start a serious thought, I could see a cordial recognition of its importance; I wish I could see a disposition to pursue it, instead of a chilling silence which obliges him to draw in as if he had dropped something dangerous to the state, or inimical to the general cheerfulness, or derogatory to his own understanding. I only desire that as, without any effort on the part of the speaker, but merely from the overflowing fullness of a mind habitually occupied with one leading concern, we easily perceive that one of the company is a lawyer, another a soldier, a third a physician, I only wish that we could oftener discover from the same plenitude, so hard to conceal where it exists, that we were in a company of Christians."

"We must not expect in our day," said Mr. Stanley, "to see revive that animating picture of the prevalence of religious intercourse given by the prophet: 'Then they that feared the Lord, spake often one to another.' And yet one can not but regret that, in select society, men well informed as we know, well principled as we hope, having one common portion of being to fill, having one common faith, one common Father, one common journey to perform, one common termination to that journey, and one common object in view beyond it, should, when together, be so unwilling to advert occasionally to those great points which doubtless often occupy them in secret; that they should on the contrary adopt a sort of inverted hypocrisy, and wish to appear worse than they really are; that they should be so backward to give or to gain information, to lend or to borrow lights, in a matter in which they are all equally interested: which can not be the case in any other possible subject."

"In all human concerns," said I, "we find that those dispositions, tastes, and affections which are brought into exercise, flourish, while others are smothered by concealment."

"It is certain," replied Mr. Stanley, "that knowledge which is never brought forward is apt to decline. Some feelings require to be excited in order to know if they exist. In short, topics of every kind which are kept totally out of sight make a fainter impression on the mind than such as are occasionally introduced. Communication is a great strengthener of any principle. Feelings, as well as ideas, are often elicited by collision. Thoughts that are never to be produced, in time seldom present themselves, while mutual interchange almost creates as well as cultivates them. And as to the social affections, I am persuaded that men would love each other more cordially; good-will and kindness would be inconceivably promoted, were they in the habit of maintaining that sort of intercourse which would keep up a mutual regard for their eternal interests, and lead them more to consider each other as candidates for the same immortality through the same common hope."

Just as he had ceased to speak, we heard a warbling of female voices, which came softened to us by distance and the undulation of the air. The little band under the oak had finished their cheerful repast, and arranged themselves in the same regular procession in which they had arrived. They stood still at a respectful distance from the temple, and in their artless manner sung Addison's beautiful version of the twenty-third psalm, which the Miss Astons had taught them, because it was a favorite with their mother.

Here the setting sun reminded us to retreat to the house. Before we quitted the temple, however, Sir George Aston, ventured modestly to intimate a wish, that if it pleased the Almighty to spare our lives, the same party should engage always to celebrate this anniversary in the Temple of Friendship, which should be finished on a larger scale, and rendered less unworthy to receive such guests. The ladies smiled assentingly. Ph[oe]be applauded rapturously. Sir John Belfield and I warmly approved the proposal. Mr. Stanley said it could not but meet with his cordial concurrence, as it would involve the assurance of an annual visit from his valued friends.

As we walked into the house, Lady Aston, who held by my arm, in answer to the satisfaction I expressed at the day I had passed, said, "we owe what little we are and do, under Providence, to Mr. Stanley. You will admire his discriminating mind, when I tell you that he recommends these little exhibitions for my daughters far more than to his own. He says that they, being naturally cheerful and habitually active, require not the incentive of company to encourage them. But that for my poor timid inactive girls, the support and animating presence of a few chosen friends just give them that degree of life and spirit which serves to warm their hearts, and keep their minds in motion."