e to eat and
drink, to show their fine clothes, to weary and to hate one another.
The sympathy of bon vivants is, it must be acknowleged, very lively
and sincere towards each other; but this can last only during the hour
of dinner, unless they revive, and prolong, by the powers of
imagination, the memory of the feast. Some foreign traveller[85] tells
us, that "every year, at Naples, an officer of the police goes through
the city, attended by a trumpeter, who proclaims in all the squares
and cross-ways, how many thousand oxen, calves, lambs, hogs, &c. the
Neapolitans have had the honour of eating in the course of the year."
The people all listen with extreme attention to this proclamation, and
are immoderately delighted at the huge amount.

A degree, and scarcely one degree, above the brute sympathy of good
eaters, is that gregarious propensity which is sometimes honoured with
the name of sociability. The current sympathy, or appearance of
sympathy, which is to be found amongst the idle and frivolous in
fashionable life, is wholly unconnected with even the idea of esteem.
It is therefore pernicious to all who partake of it; it excites to no
great exertions; it rewards neither useful nor amiable qualities: on
the contrary, it is to be obtained by vice, rather than by virtue; by
folly much more readily than by wisdom. It is the mere follower of
fashion, and of dissipation, and it keeps those in humour and
countenance, who ought to hear the voice of public reproach, and who
might be roused by the fear of disgrace, or the feelings of shame, to
exertions which should justly entitle them to the approbation and
affection of honourable friends.

Young people, who are early in life content with this _convivial_
sympathy, may, in the common phrase, become _very good, pleasant
companions_; but there is little chance that they should ever become
any thing more, and there is great danger that they may be led into
any degree of folly, extravagance, or vice, to which fashion and the
voice of numbers invite. It sometimes happens, that men of superior
abilities, have such an indiscriminate love of applause and sympathy,
that they reduce themselves to the standard of all their casual
companions, and vary their objects of ambition with the opinion of the
silly people with whom they chance to associate. In public life, party
spirit becomes the ruling principle of men of this character; in
private life, they are addicted to clubs, and asso