ject before, which you seem to have studied a good deal.” I answered, “Why, we were not reduced to that, that I know of!”
There are persons, who without being chargeable with the vice here spoken of, yet “stand accountant for as great a sin:” though not dull and monotonous, they are vivacious mannerists in their conversation, and excessive egotists. Though they run over a thousand subjects in mere gaiety of heart, their delight still flows from one idea, namely, themselves. Open the book in what page you will, there is a frontispiece of themselves staring you in the face. They are a sort of Jacks o' the Green, with a sprig of laurel, a little tinsel, and a little smut, but still playing antics and keeping in incessant motion, to attract attention and extort your pittance of approbation. Whether they talk of the town or the country, poetry or politics, it comes to much the same thing. If they talk to you of the town, its diversions, “its palaces, its ladies, and its streets,” they are the delight, the grace, and ornament of it. If they are describing the charms of the country, they give no account of any individual spot or object or source of pleasure but the circumstance of their being there. “With them conversing, we forget all place, all seasons, and their change.”
