pth of spiteful and sordid dullness. But
still, when the mischiefs of habitual personality have been admitted to
the uttermost, there remains something to be said on the other side. We
are not inhabitants of Jupiter or Saturn, but human beings to whom
nothing that is human is wholly alien. And if in the pursuit of high
abstractions and improving themes we imitate too closely Wordsworth's
avoidance of Personal Talk, our dinner-table will run much risk of
becoming as dull as that poet's own fireside.

Granting, then, that to have something to say which is worth hearing is
the substance of good conversation, we must reckon among its accidents
and ornaments a manner which knows how to be easy and free without being
free-and-easy; a habitual deference to the tastes and even the
prejudices of other people; a hearty desire to be, or at least to seem,
interested in their concerns; and a constant recollection that even the
most patient hearers may sometimes wish to be speakers. Above all else,
the agreeable talker cultivates gentleness and delicacy of speech,
avoids aggressive and overwhelming displays, and remembers the tortured
cry of the neurotic bard:--

"Vociferated logic kills me quite;
A noisy man is always in the right--
I twirl my thumbs, fall back into my chair,
Fix on the wainscot a distressful stare;
And when I hope his blunders all are out,
Reply discreetly, 'To be sure--no doubt!'"

If these, or something like these, are the attributes of good
conversation, in whom do we find them best exemplified? Who best
understands the Art of Conversation? Who, in a word, are our best
talkers? I hope that I shall not be considered ungallant if I say
nothing about the part borne in conversation by ladies. Really it is a
sacred awe that makes me mute. London is happy in possessing not a few
hostesses, excellently accomplished, and not more accomplished than
gracious, of whom it is no flattery to say that to know them is a
liberal education. But, as Lord Beaconsfield observes in a more than
usually grotesque passage of _Lothair_, "We must not profane the
mysteries of Bona Dea." We will not "peep and botanize" on sacred soil,
nor submit our most refined delights to the impertinences of critical
analysis.

In considering the Art of Conversation I obey a natural instinct when I
think first of Mr. Charles Villiers, M.P. His venerable age alone would
entitle him to this pre-eminence, for he was born in 180