Sydney Smith wrote thus to a
friend: "I have a breakfast of philosophers to-morrow at ten
punctually--muffins and metaphysics, crumpets and contradiction. Will
you come?" That inviting picture, though it was drawn before I was born,
exactly describes the breakfast-parties which I remember. One met all
sorts of people, but very few Mary Andersons. Breakfasters were
generally old,--politicians, diplomatists, authors, journalists, men of
science, political economists, and everyone else who was most improving.
No doubt it was a priceless privilege to meet them; yet, as I heard them
prate and prose, I could not help recalling a favourite passage from
Mrs. Sherwood's quaint tale of _Henry Milner_:--

"Mr. Dolben, as usual, gave utterance at breakfast to several of those
pure and wise and refined principles, which sometimes distil as drops of
honey from the lips of pious and intellectual old persons." It was
breakfast that set Mr. Dolben off. We are not told that he distilled his
honey at dinner or supper; so his case must be added to the long list of
deleterious results produced by breakfasting in public.

Conversation must, I think, have been at rather a low ebb when I first
encountered it in London. Men breakfasted in public, as we have just
seen, in order to indulge in it; and I remember a terrible Club where it
raged on two nights of every week, in a large, dark, and draughty room,
while men sat round an indifferent fire, drinking barley-water, and
talking for talking's sake--the most melancholy of occupations. But at
these dismal orgies one never heard anything worth remembering. The
"pious and intellectual old persons" whom Mrs. Sherwood admired had
withdrawn from the scene, if indeed they had ever figured on it. Those
who remained were neither pious nor intellectual, but compact of spite
and greediness, with here and there worse faults. But some brighter
spirits were coming on. To call them by the names which they then bore,
Mr. George Trevelyan and Mr. John Morley were thought very promising,
for social fame in London takes a long time to establish itself. Sir
William Harcourt was capital company in the heavier style; and Lord
Rosebery in the lighter. But Mr. Herbert Paul was known only to the
_Daily News_, and Mr. Augustine Birrell's ray serene had not emerged
from the dim, unfathomed caves of the Chancery Bar.

So far, I have been writing about Conversation with a capital "C,"--an
elaborate and studied art which i