the Eryboean darkness of the dinners and evening parties of
your fashionable friends, sit nights long, speaking and answering, half
at random, without one thought to amuse, without one idea to interest
you--what pleasure have you felt when some chance expression, some
remark--a mere word, perhaps--of your neighbour beside you, reveals
that she has attained that wondrous charm, that most fascinating of all
possessions--the art to converse; that neither fearful of being deemed
pedantic on the one hand, or uninformed on the other, she launches forth
freely on the topic of the moment, gracefully illustrating her meaning
by womanly touches of sensibility and delicacy, as though to say, these
lighter weapons were her own peculiar arms, while men might wield the
more massive ones of sense and judgment. Then with what lightness she
flits along from theme to theme, half affecting to infer that she dares
not venture deep, yet showing every instant traits of thoughtfulness
and reflection!

How long since have you forgotten that she who thus holds you entranced
is the brunette, with features rather too bold than otherwise; that
those eyes which now sparkle with the fire of mind seemed but half
an hour ago to have a look of cold effrontery? Such is the charm of
_esprit_; and without it the prettiest woman wants her greatest charm. A
diamond she may be, and as bright and of purest water; but the setting,
which gives such lustre to the stone, is absent, and half the brilliancy
of the gem is lost to the beholder.

Now, of all tongues ever invented by man, German is the most difficult
and clumsy for all purposes of conversation. You may preach in it, you
may pray in it, you may hold a learned argument, or you may lay down
some involved and intricate statement--you may, if you have the gift,
even tell a story in it, provided the hearers be patient, and some have
gone so far as to venture on expressing a humorous idea in German; but
these have been bold men, and their venturous conduct is more to be
admired than imitated. At the same time, it is right to add that a
German joke is a very wooden contrivance at best, and that the praise
it meets with is rather in the proportion of the difficulty of the
manufacture than of the superiority of the article--just as we admire
those Indian toys carved with a rusty nail, or those fourth-string
performances of Paganini and his followers.

And now to come back to the students, whom mayhap you deem