It is not that those who thus take to irregular habits are essentially those of low tastes.  Often it is quite the reverse.  Among half a dozen intimate friends, abandoning formalities and sitting at ease round the fire, none will enter with greater enjoyment into the highest kind of social intercourse—­the genuine communion of thought and feeling; and if the circle includes women of intelligence and refinement, so much the greater is their pleasure.  It is because they will no longer be choked with the mere dry husks of conversation which society offers them, that they fly its assemblies, and seek those with whom they may have discourse that is at least real, though unpolished.  The men who thus long for substantial mental sympathy, and will go where they can get it, are often, indeed, much better at the core than the men who are content with the inanities of gloved and scented party-goers—­men who feel no need to come morally nearer to their fellow creatures than they can come while standing, tea-cup in hand, answering trifles with trifles; and who, by feeling no such need, prove themselves shallow-thoughted and cold-hearted.

It is true, that some who shun drawing-rooms do so from inability to bear the restraints prescribed by a genuine refinement, and that they would be greatly improved by being kept under these restraints.  But it is not less true that, by adding to the legitimate restraints, which are based on convenience and a regard for others, a host of factitious restraints based only on convention, the refining discipline, which would else have been borne with benefit, is rendered unbearable, and so misses its end.  Excess of government invariably defeats itself by driving away those to be governed.  And if over all who desert its entertainments in disgust either at their emptiness or their formality, society thus loses its salutary influence—­if such not only fail to receive that moral culture which the company of ladies, when rationally regulated, would give them, but, in default of other relaxation, are driven into habits and companionships which often end in gambling and drunkenness; must we not say that here, too, is an evil not to be passed over as insignificant?

Then consider what a blighting effect these multitudinous preparations and ceremonies have upon the pleasures they profess to subserve.  Who, on calling to mind the occasions of his highest social enjoyments, does not find them to have been wholly informal, perhaps impromptu?  How delightful a picnic of friends, who forget all observances save those dictated by good nature!  How pleasant the little unpretended gatherings of book-societies, and the like; or those purely accidental meetings of a few people well known to each other!  Then, indeed, we may see that “a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.”  Cheeks flush, and eyes sparkle.  The witty grow brilliant, and even the dull are excited into saying good things.  There is an overflow of topics; and the right thought, and the right words to put it in, spring up unsought.  Grave alternates with gay:  now serious converse, and now jokes, anecdotes, and playful raillery.  Every one’s best nature is shown, every one’s best feelings are in pleasurable activity; and, for the time, life seems well worth having.