talk as our English brothers, are less respectful to conversational
amenities; and both of us are far behind the French in the gracious art
of verbal expression. Not only is the spoken English of the cultured
Irish the most cosmopolitan and best modulated of any English in the
world, but the conversation of cultivated Irishmen more adequately
approaches the perfection of the French.

It is as illuminating to study the best models in human intercourse as
to study the best models in literature, or painting, or any other art.
One of the distinct elements in French conversation is that it is
invariably kept general; and by general I mean including in the talk all
the conversational group as opposed to _tete-a-tete_ dialog. Many people
disagree with the French in this. Addison declared that there is no such
thing as conversation except between two persons; and Ralph Waldo
Emerson and Walter Savage Landor said something of the same sort.
Shelley was distinctly a _tete-a-tete_ talker, as Mr. Benson, the
present-day essayist, in some of his intimate discourses, proclaims
himself to be. But Burke and Browning, the best conversationalists in
the history of the Anglo-Saxon race, like all the famous women of the
French _salon_, from Mme. Roland to Mme. de Stael, kept pace with any
number of interlocutors on any number of subjects, from the most
abstruse science to the lightest _jeu d'esprit_. Good talk between two
is no doubt a duet of exquisite sympathy; but true conversation is more
like a fugue in four or eight parts than like a duet. Furthermore,
general and _tete-a-tete_ conversation have both their place and
occasion. At a dinner-table in France private chats are very quickly
dispelled by some thoughtful moderator. Dinner guests who devote
themselves to each other alone are not tolerated by the French hostess
as by the English and American. Because _tete-a-tete_ conversation is
considered good form so generally among English-speaking peoples, I have
in other essays adapted my comments on this subject to our customs; but
talk which is distributed among several who conform to the courtesies
and laws of good conversation is the best kind of talk. In general talk
every one ought to have a voice. It is the undue humility of some and
the arrogance and polemical tendency of others that prevent good general
conversation. People have only to begin with three axioms: the first,
that everybody is entitled, and often bound, to form his o