two-and-twenty who has sat coolly listening to
your statement, who contradicts you before the
assembled company, and who (confound his
impudence!) is right in his facts. Facts are what
are wanted now. The lighter qualities of wit,
fancy, and eloquence are at a discount, and the
man who has been knocking about the town with
his ears open, with the last information from the
clubs, the last news of the moment, is the man
who prospers best at the dinner-table.

And, now-a-days, nobody is ever wrong. There
are comparatively no representatives of that
section of society which used to exist, and which
took up untenable ground, and tried to sustain
a falling side. This is very satisfactory, no
doubt. It shows indisputably how wise we have
all grown, how widely information is disseminated,
and generally what an enlightened age we
live in. Still, it is not amusing. To take a case.
Suppose that the recent Garibaldi excitement
had occurred years ago. There would have
been found some wrong-headed individual in
society who would have taken his part, gone with
him through thick and thin, and who, when beaten
out of every rational stronghold in which he
sought refuge, would have ended by affirming
stoutly, " Well, I don't care what you say, he's
a fine enthusiastic fellow, and if I had been in his
place I would have done just the same."

This sustainer of wrong opinions, this devil's
advocate, this occupant of the opposition benches
in our social parliament, hardly exists among us.
He is better away, no doubt; but still he made
talk. Of that same Garibaldian question, how
very little has been said among us, considering
the importance of the subject. One opinion
—- the right one, that Garibaldi has made a mistake
-— has been subscribed to. The verdict has been
unanimous. There has been no dissentient
jurymen to hold out and oppose it. This is an age
that cares no more for enthusiasm than it does
for eloquence. Judiciousness, prudence, crafty
statesmanship, it approves of. Heart is out of
fashion. There is no sympathy for righteous
indignation. The age is a cool age, and
sympathises with coolness.

It being the case, then, that our modern
conversation is not on great topics and abstract
questions, as in the days of Burke and Johnson; it
being tolerably certain that wit and repartee are
no longer the order of the day, boring convivial
stories being disposed of, and argument being at
an end because society is so much of the same
opinion; it remains to ask what manner of talk
has taken the place of the old system of
conversation, and how we wiseacres of this day keep the
ball going at all, and rescue our host and hostess
from the misery of presiding at a speechless meal?

Bradshaw is a great subject. It is wonderful,
on certain occasions, to observe how very telling
is a profound knowledge of the works of that
author. The movements of the age are so rapid
and so numerous, that it is not uncommon
when some new people arrive at a country-house,
for the conversation to turn immediately on the
pros and cons with their getting away,
and straightway one is in for "loop-lines" and
"branches," and trains that stop and trains that
don't stop, for half an hour together. As to the
extent to which folks of another class talk about
railways, it is something perfectly prodigious,
and assuredly worthy of chronicling. Go down to
the north by the line which suits you best, wait
at a junction for a short time, and then tell me
how much of the conversation to which you
listened in the carriage, or which was being kept
up among the other passengers waiting at the
station, was on other subjects than railways.
"I understand that that Boiler and Buster Line
is open at last," remarks hard-headed gentleman
No. 1 to hard-headed gentleman No. 2. " Ah,"
replies No. 2, " I should be sorry to have shares
in it. A friend of mine had some concern with
the party that did most of the legal work
connected with that business, and he says it was
the veriest job from beginning to end that he
ever heard of." " Line wasn't wanted, eh?"
"Wanted? No. Why, now, take a similar
instance; look at that Sterril Valleys Branch of
the Great Beastern. Disgraceful, from
beginning to end." " Sir Robert Acres had a good
deal to do with that, hadn't he?" " Yes, I
should think he had. The line came through his
property; a parcel of nasty sour land it was,
precious little good to anybody. Well, what do you
think, now, he got from the company?" &c. &c.

Then there is the discontented talk about
railways, which is by no means uncommon. " What
time are we due at Spindon?" says a gentleman,
holding a penny newspaper in his hand, and
having always before him the column devoted to
commercial news. " 2.35," replies another
gentleman, with another penny newspaper also folded
with a view to the money article. " Why, it's
2.48 now," says the first speaker. " 2.48! of
course it is. Who ever knew this line punctual?
I've travelled by it now regularly for six years,
and I never knew a train come in to its time
yet." "What time does the express pass?"
"Well, it ought to pass at 2.57, but it's always
behind time. We shall be shunted off presently
to let it go by." " Ah, it's shameful such
want of punctuality. It's easy enough to keep
time if they try. Now look at that other line,
the South-Northern, they're just as remarkable
the other way. If you see one of their trains go
by you, you can tell what o'clock it is to half a
minute without looking at your watch." " The
Smashem and Donefor line is very uupunctual,"
puts in a new speaker, who has been—- degraded
wretch-— reading a periodical in which there are
works of fiction and other un-practical matters.
But the line alluded to leads to the Continent, so
neither of the commercial gentlemen has
anything more to say than " Ah, I don't know that
part of the country." And this is said
contemptuously. For, your purely commercial man,
who is always travelling about the northern and
midland counties, looks upon all other parts of
the world with scorn, and regards those persons