how of nobleness and happiness, with a
haggard reality of weariness and woe underneath? In the glare and
fuss of society. And where do you find, purely shielded behind
manners all frost, a heart all celestial fire? under conditions of
unpretending simplicity, an experience ever fresh and serene, full of
joy and dignity, and endlessly progressive? In those who lead lives
of quiet sincerity and humility, consecrated to choice studies and
chosen friends. What sweet charm or commanding grandeur or satisfying
worth can be looked for in persons, the highest palpitations of whose
hearts are raised by the touches of pride, money, and vanity? More
patience, sincerity, studious seclusion, meditative consecration, and
steady sympathy are the foremost want of our age.

The two arts of letter-writing and conversation, invaluable both as
instruments of pleasure and of culture, seem to be dying out before
the encroachment of innumerable trifles, absorbing amusements,
tyrannical egotisms, and that pernicious flood of ephemeral
literature, whose varieties are daily spawned upon all tables. The
long, careful letters, full of thought, full of true personal
interest and earnest general sentiment, so common two or three
generations ago, are all but unknown now. There is no time left for
them.

Conversation, too, has become the ghost of what it was. Where are the
famous talkers now? Where are the circles in which conversation is
carried on as the loftiest and richest of the social arts? The
sustained comparison of views, interchange and discussion of
opinions, accumulation of knowledge, argument, wit, sympathy, on
themes of intense interest and solemn import, once so common in
cultivated society, where all listened while each successively spoke,
have given way before the telegraph, the newspaper, the pamphlet, the
book, the platform, the swift diffusion of all information and the
incessant hurry of everybody. Letter-writing is an indirect exchange
of thoughts. Conversation is a personal exchange of life. The obvious
decline of the former is a great loss; the notorious decline of the
latter is a greater loss.

There is no way in which those women who are able to give the tone
and set the fashion in society, can do so much good as by endeavoring
to reinstate conversation, and to teach in every company the
nobleness of leisure and attention, that each one who speaks shall be
inspired to the fullest training of his best powers by the listeni