rs to the meeting of human souls and hearts, and
not to the meeting of a fortuitous concourse of male and female
evening-dresses. I have now before me a very brilliant published account
of a reception at George Eliot's house. Those assemblies were company,
and company of the finest kind. The exaggerated fuss made by the sibyl's
husband in order to secure silence while she was speaking sometimes
became a little embarrassing when men of a humorous turn were there; but
nevertheless the best in England met in that drawing-room, and all that
was highest in literature, science, and art was talked over in graceful
fashion. The sniffing drawl of Society and the impudent affectation of
cynicism were not to be found; and grave men and women--some of them
mournful enough, it may be--agreed to make the useful hours fleet to
some profit. No man or woman in England--or in Europe for that
matter--was unwilling to enter that modest but brilliant assemblage, and
I wish some one could have taken minute notes, though that of course
would have been too entirely shocking. When I think of that little
deep-voiced lady gathering the choicest spirits of her day together, and
keeping so many notes in tuneful chime, I hardly know whether to use
superlatives of admiration about her or superlatives of contempt about
the fribbles who crush each other on staircases and babble like parrots
in an aviary. If we cast back a little, we have another example of an
almost perfect company. People have talked of Johnson, Burke, Boswell,
Beauclerc, and Goldsmith until the subject is growing a thought stale;
but, unless a reader takes Boswell and reads the book attentively after
he has come to maturity, he can hardly imagine how fine was that
admirable company. They were men of high aims and strong sense; they
talked at their very best, and they talked because they wished to attain
clear views of life and fate. The old gladiator sometimes argued for
victory, but that was only in moments of whim, and he was always ready
to acknowledge when he was in error. Those men may sometimes have drunk
too much wine; they may have spoken platitudes on occasion; but they
were good company for each other, and the hearty, manly friendship which
all but poor Goldsmith and Boswell felt for every one else was certainly
excellent. Assemblies like the Club are impossible nowadays; but surely
we might find some modification suited even to our gigantic intellects
and our exaggerated cle