t precious of all, since it
consists in the display of actual beings, not through the gray veil of
abstractions, but in themselves, as they are in nature and in history,
with their visible color and forms, with their accessories and
surroundings in time and space, a peasant at his cart, a Quaker in
his meeting-house, a German baron in his castle, Dutchmen, Englishmen,
Spaniards, Italians, Frenchmen, in their homes,[4122] a great lady, a
designing woman, provincials, soldiers, prostitutes,[4123] and the
rest of the human medley, on every step of the social ladder, each an
abridgment of his kind and in the passing light of a sudden flash.

For, the most striking feature of this style is the prodigious rapidity,
the dazzling and bewildering stream of novelties, ideas, images, events,
landscapes, narratives, dialogues, brief little pictures, following
each other rapidly as if in a magic-lantern, withdrawn almost as soon
as presented by the impatient magician who, in the twinkling of an eye,
girdles the world and, constantly accumulating one on top of the other,
history, fable, truth and fancy, the present time and times past, frames
his work now with a parade as absurd as that of a country fair, and
now with a fairy scene more magnificent than all those of the opera. To
amuse and be amused, "to diffuse his spirit in every imaginable mode,
like a glowing furnace into which all substances are thrown by turns to
evolve every species of flame, sparkle and odor," is his first instinct.
"Life," he says again, "is an infant to be rocked until it goes
to sleep." Never was a mortal more excited and more exciting, more
incapable of silence and more hostile to ennui,[4124] better endowed for
conversation, more evidently destined to become the king of a sociable
century in which, with six pretty stories, thirty witticisms and some
confidence in himself, a man could obtain a social passport and
the certainty of being everywhere welcome. Never was there a writer
possessing to so high a degree and in such abundance every qualification
of the conversationalist, the art of animating and of enlivening
discourse, the talent for giving pleasure to people of society.
Perfectly refined when he chose to be, confining himself without
inconvenience to strict decorum, of finished politeness, of exquisite
gallantry, deferential without being servile, fond without being
mawkish,[4125] and always at his ease, it suffices that he should be
before the pu