world thoroughly: appreciating it at
its just value, and using it as if formed for his peculiar profit and
pleasure. He is lately returned from England, where he has been
received with that hospitality that characterises the English, and has
gone a round of visits to many of the best houses.

He spoke in high terms of the hospitality he had experienced, but
agreed in the opinion I have often heard Lord Byron give, that the
society in English country-houses is any thing but agreeable.

I had heard so much of Mr. M----, that I listened to his conversation
with more interest than I might have done, had not so many reports of
his shrewdness and wit reached me. Neither seem to have been overrated;
for nothing escapes his quick perception; and his caustic wit is
unsparingly and fearlessly applied to all subjects and persons that
excite it into action.

He appears to be a privileged person--an anomaly seldom innoxiously
permitted in society: for those who may say _all they_ please, rarely
abstain from saying much that may displease others; and, though a laugh
may he often excited by their wit, some one of the circle is sure to be
wounded by it.

Great wit is not often allied to good-nature, for the indulgence of the
first is destructive to the existence of the second, except where the
wit is tempered by a more than ordinary share of sensibility and
refinement, directing its exercise towards works of imagination,
instead of playing it off, as is too frequently the case, against those
with whom its owner may come in contact.

Byron, had he not been a poet, would have become a wit in society; and,
instead of delighting his readers, would have wounded his associates.
Luckily for others, as well as for his own fame, he devoted to
literature that ready and brilliant wit which sparkles in so many of
his pages, instead of condescending to expend it in _bons mots_, or
_reparties_, that might have set the table on a roar, and have been
afterwards, as often occurs, mutilated in being repeated by, others.

The quickness of apprehension peculiar to the French, joined to the
excessive _amour propre_, which is one of the most striking of their
characteristics, render them exceedingly susceptible to the arrows of
wit; which, when barbed by ridicule, inflict wounds on their vanity
difficult to be healed, and which they are ever ready to avenge.

But this very acuteness of apprehension induces a caution in not
resenting the assaults of