As clever people cannot elevate the mass with which
they herd to their own level, they are apt to sink
to theirs; and persons with talents that might have
served for nobler purposes are suffered to degenerate
into diseurs de bons mots and raconteurs
de societe, content with the paltry distinction
of being considered amusing. How many such have
I encountered, satisfied with being pigmies, who might
have grown to be giants, but who were consoled by
the reflection that in that world in which their sole
aim is to shine, pigmies are more tolerated than giants,
as people prefer looking down to looking up!
Lord Allen and Sir Andrew Barnard dined here yesterday.
They appear to enter into the gaiety of Paris with
great zest, go the round of the theatres, dine at
all the celebrated restaurateurs, mix enough
in the beau monde to be enabled to observe
the difference between the Parisian and London one,
and will, at the expiration of the term assigned to
their sejour here, return to England well satisfied
with their trip and with themselves.
Lord A—— has tasted all the nouveaux
plats a la mode, for at Paris new dishes are as
frequently invented as new bonnets or caps; and the
proficiency in the culinary art which he has acquired
will render him an oracle at his clubs, until the
more recent arrival of some other epicurean from the
French capital deposes his brief sovereignty.
But it is not in the culinary art alone that Lord
Allen evinces his good taste, for no one is a better
judge of all that constitutes the agremens
of life, or more au fait of the [* omitted word?]
of contributing to them.
Sir A. B——, as devoted as ever to
music, has heard all the new, and finds that the old,
like old friends, loses nothing by comparison.
It is pleasant to see that the advance of years impairs
not the taste for a refined and innocent pleasure.
CHAPTER XXI.
Mr. Rogers and Mr. Luttrell spent last evening here.
The minds of both teem with reflection, and their
conversation is a high intellectual treat to me.
There is a repose in the society of clever and refined
Englishmen to be met with in no other: the absence
of all attempts to shine, or at least of the evidence
of such attempts; the mildness of the manners; the
low voices, the freedom from any flattery, except the
most delicate and acceptable of all to a fastidious
person, namely, that implied by the subjects of conversation
chosen, and the interest yielded to them;—yes,
these peculiarities have a great charm for me, and
Mr. Rogers and Mr. Luttrell possess them in an eminent
degree.
The mercurial temperaments of the French preclude
them from this calmness of manner and mildness of
speech. More obsequiously polite and attentive
to women, the exuberance of their animal spirits often
hurries them into a gaiety evinced by brilliant sallies
and clever observations. They shine, but they
let the desire to do so be too evident to admit of
that quietude that forms one of the most agreeable,
as well as distinguishing, attributes of the conversation
of a refined and highly-intellectual Englishman.
Copyrights
The Idler in France from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
