exhausted,-when the acuteness of the mind is on the wane, the vital element contaminated, the night advancing, all nature tending to collapse, should keep people together? Why should not the gay but spiritless crowd separate, till time has again brought round the desire and capacity of enjoyment.

I will not conceal from you, that this letter has been written the day after assisting at a large party of this kind, and under the influence of that sort of depression which usually follows an unwonted loss of rest. But after making all due allowances for the peculiar medium through which a man is apt to view the pleasures by which his spirits have been exhausted, you will, I think, agree with me, that my representation of modern visiting is substantially correct, and that the system might be greatly improved by a little attention to the objects which it purposes to accomplish.

The art of managing social intercourse, so as to extract from it the greatest amount of pleasure, is yet to be discovered. Our own nation appears peculiarly inexpert in this matter. We mix up too much of the sensual with the social, as if mere mental pleasures,

the pleasures of the imagination, the intellect, and the affections, were too weak to support themselves, without the aid of animal indulgence. I will not undertake to say that there is not considerable truth in this view of the incapacity of mankind to find sufficient enjoyment in society, without the assistance of those sensual gratifications which, after all, are best relished in private, and which, perhaps, true delicacy would withdraw as much as possible from observation. The Italians, who have adopted a different system from ours, do not appear to have succeeded in rendering society more instructive or delightful, if we are to credit those who have had the best opportunities of judging. Landor, in his Imaginary Conversations, addressing his Florentine Visitor, says, "The Italian habit of evening conversazioni, as those assemblies are called where people do anything rather than converse, produces the same effect on the minds of your countrymen, as brandy does on the bodies of your greyhounds: it stupifies them, takes away their strength, and makes them little all their lives." And Lord Byron, in one of his Letters, tells us that the "conversazioni of the Italians

are not society at all. They go to the theatre to talk, and into company to hold their tongues." This is an instance in proof of the inability of human beings to furnish mutual entertainment out of their own mental resources. When they are assembled together without external aids, they are mute: when they have amusement before their eyes, they find no difficulty in conversing. "They ma

nage these things better in France." But it is time to conclude.

Farewell.

F. R.

LETTER XXI.

Purity of Metaphors-Difference in this respect among Writers, owing to a difference in the faculty of Conception-Instances of mixed and pure Metaphors-Pursuing Metaphors too far -Examples.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

In the course of my desultory reading, it has often struck me that there is scarcely a greater beauty of style than purity in the employment of metaphors or, perhaps, I should be more correct in saying, that there is scarcely a greater deformity than the violation of it. The difference between writers is, in this respect, immense. Some of them seem totally insensible to the barbarous transgression of the laws of good taste, which they commit by jumbling together half a dozen inconsistent figures; while others they are not many-exhibit a delicate propriety in the use of metaphorical expressions, which seems rather the instinctive tact of exquisite discernment than the effect of any sedulous attention. It is impossible for a

writer to be perspicuous unless he avoids this confusion. Indeed, all clear writers (and all good writers are clear) will be found to be remarkably exempt from the fault. The pure

use of metaphors, it cannot be too often repeated, is one of the essential constituents of an excellent style.

The difference between writers in this respect seems to me to depend chiefly on the degree in which they are endowed with that intellectual faculty, which in the nomenclature of modern metaphysicians is denominated

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conception;" that power which presents to the mind ideas of objects not actually present to the senses. I suspect there is a greater disparity in this faculty than is generally supposed. In some men it is so strong, that the mere conception of things seems as vivid and as capable of affecting the feelings, as the actual presence of the objects themselves. They live in a sort of intellectual panorama, where ideas stand out with all the distinctness of their material models. There are others, on the contrary, who, without any inability of recollection, seem destitute of the power of strongly conceiving the ideas which they