[talking on his (Sharp's) favourite topic. And what
agony it must have been to Blunt, in his turn, to
listen while Sharp was letting off an effective
story which Blunt had that very morning routed
out of an old book of French memoirs.

Besides the big talk of Conversationalists
Sharp and Blunt, and the stories related by
professed raconteurs, there were other after-dinner
stories, which used, some few years since, to go
the round of the dinner-table with the decanters.
"Did you ever hear the story," the host of the
evening would say, "of the old Scotch doctor
and his servant?" " No, what was that?" returns
some hypocrite who knows the anecdote by
heart. And then the master of the feast goes
onto tell how the old physician was entertaining
a company of friends at dinner, how he sent his
servant-boy to fetch one last bottle of most
especial port, how on the boy's appearing with it,
the doctor asks in an agony, " Have you shook
that wine, Jock?" and how Jock, misled by the
wording of the question, and thinking that he
has omitted an important ceremony, replies, " Na,
sir, but I wool," and forthwith treats the bottle
to a most vigorous shaking then and there.
Anecdotes such as this used to be part of the
dessert. They are now almost as obsolete as
the "good talk" of the days of Johnson.

And not alone these changes in our modern
conversation have I to chronicle. What has
become of the Wit, the Satirist? The mantle
that sat on the shoulders of Rogers, of Sydney
Smith, of Jerrold, on whom has it descended?
A man may bore his company now with some
long story about his escape from a certain
danger, or his recovery from some tremendous
fever, but when he comes to the crisis, " I really
thought I should die," there is no Rogers
lo give a low groan, and say, parenthetically,
"Why didn't ye?" The Bore enthusiastic, too,
who has a great deal to say about a certain
opera he heard in Italy, may now with perfect
impunity assure his audience that there is one
particular tune in it which quite " carries him away;"
for there is no Jerrold to look quietly round the
company, and ask, "Can nobody whistle it?"

When Sydney Smith went out to dinner, it is
said that the moment of his arrival could be
detected because the servants were heard laughing
as he came through the hall and ascended the
staircase. When the gates of Holland Park
opened to receive his stalwart form, or to let in
the chariot through whose windows might be
seen the pale visage of Rogers, men knew that
an event of public importance was coming off.
A sort of congress of wit was assembling. In
time, the results of that meeting would come
out, and the best part of the talk would soon be
public property. The retorts courteous and the
quips modest which such assemblies brought out,
were quite a staple commodity of the day.

We have no Conversation Sharps now. Men
known, out of their own immediate circles for
their wit in talking, are scarce. There are
plenty of brilliant entertainments given, and
plenty of houses which people move heaven and
earth to get into; but it is not because they
have the reputation of being frequented by
such company as used to be got together in
the days of old Holland House.  The dinner-
table is a republic now, and the autocrats who
used to rule it have resigned their sway, or
are gone to sit at that festive board to which
Hamlet despatched Polonius.  The average of
social ability has most likely become higher.  With
this, there goes a great want of veneration.  All
sorts of men now examine, and carp at,
everything that is said;  and if there be any flaw or
weak point in what a man asserts, it is pounced
upon.  This makes our talkers nervous.  It
is probable that the best things of the
professed wits, whose talk we have been occupied
with just now, survived alone, and that the same
evening which gave birth to those successful
retorts, produced also a good amount of nonsense,
of indifferent humour, and incorrect statement.
Our best brains are like this.  The head which
gave Falstaff's fun to the world issued pages of
"chaff" and laboured jesting at which one cannot
smile.  And so it may have been with these
tongue-geniuses.  They felt they carried their
audience with them, and talked confidently:
as an actor sure of applause performs better than
he who acts to a cold "house."

There are few indulgent audiences now. There
are few blind admirers. The age is cool, clever,
unenthusiastic, critical; and a man is obliged to
be so cautious in his talk lest he should make
some mistake, or lay himself open to correction
or ridicule, that he speaks in fettered
accents, and revenges himself by lying in wait
for the next speaker. The young men of
this day do not make a pleasant audience.
They are social free-thinkers. They take nothing
for granted, have little respect for age, defy the
superstitions of the period before them, and talk,
themselves—- with considerable accuracy of
statement and confidence of manner-— and this is rather
trying to some of their elders. These last have
gone through a bitter time when they themselves
were young. Many has been the conversation
which, at that time, they have sat and listened
to, but in which their voices were not heard.
While they so refrained, they were buoyed up
by the thought that the day would come when a
slight grizzled tint in their whiskers, and a
thinness of hair about their temples, would entitle
them, too, to hold forth, and when the young
members of society would listen. Alas! they
have reached the glories of grizzled whiskers,
and time has shaved a symmetrical tonsure-circle
on the tops of their heads, but has the other
desirable consummation been attained too? Not
a bit of it. The wind has dropped just as they
were going to take advantage of it. The manners
of the time have changed, and the young men
on whom our middle-aged friend had calculated
as a silent and awe-struck audience, themselves
make the best of the running. This is hard. It
is hard to be interrupted by a young rascal of