cannot take any
of these persons at a greater disadvantage than before they are provided
with their cue for the day. They ask with a face of dreary vacuity,
'Have you anything new?'--and on receiving an answer in the negative,
have nothing further to say. (They are like an oyster at the ebb of the
tide, gaping for fresh _tidings._) Talk of the Westminster Election, the
Bridge Street Association, or Mr. Cobbett's Letter to John Cropper of
Liverpool, and they are alive again. Beyond the last twenty-four hours,
or the narrow round in which they move, they are utterly to seek,
without ideas, feelings, interests, apprehensions of any sort; so that
if you betray any knowledge beyond the vulgar routine of SECOND EDITIONS
and first-hand private intelligence, you pass with them for a dull
fellow, not acquainted with what is going forward in the world, or
with the practical value of things. I have known a person of this stamp
censure John Cam Hobhouse for referring so often as he does to the
affairs of the Greeks and Romans, as if the affairs of the nation were
not sufficient for his hands: another asks you if a general in modern
times cannot throw a bridge over a river without having studied Caesar's
_Commentaries;_ and a third cannot see the use of the learned languages,
as he has observed that the greatest proficients in them are rather
taciturn than otherwise, and hesitate in their speech more than other
people. A dearth of general information is almost necessary to the
thorough-paced coffee-house politician; in the absence of thought,
imagination, sentiment, he is attracted immediately to the nearest
commonplace, and floats through the chosen regions of noise and empty
rumours without difficulty and without distraction. Meet 'any six of
these men in buckram,' and they will accost you with the same question
and the same answer: they have seen it somewhere in print, or had it
from some city oracle, that morning; and the sooner they vent their
opinions the better, for they will not keep. Like tickets of admission
to the theatre for a particular evening, they must be used immediately,
or they will be worth nothing: and the object is to find auditors for
the one and customers for the other, neither of which is difficult;
since people who have no ideas of their own are glad to hear what any
one else has to say, as those who have not free admissions to the play
will very obligingly take up with an occasional order. It sometimes
giv